


Deliver Me

by volpeanon



Category: Dishonored (Video Games)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Fantasy Racism, Kind of a fix it fic, M/M, and beyond, corvo and daud growing up together, dw corvo is here to slam dunk the offenders, everyone is going to be gay and i cannot be stopped, tagged explicit bc i am probably over cautious, what if, ye olde timey obsession with royal people's reproductive health
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-03-04
Updated: 2021-01-19
Packaged: 2021-03-01 00:47:30
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 25,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23016496
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/volpeanon/pseuds/volpeanon
Summary: In the schoolyard, Corvo marvelled at his quick hands.
Relationships: Corvo Attano/Daud
Comments: 48
Kudos: 92





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> I'll be real I haven't read the comics or books or twitter threads so a load of canonical childhood stuff is probably out there that I don't know about. AH WELL. Don't judge me, I'm just here to make shit gay on stilts.

In the schoolyard, Corvo marvelled at his quick hands, calloused like a working man’s and tanned with the sun.

"How do you do that?" he asked, trying not to let the fast-moving fingers become a blur. He had yet to work out how exactly they made the cards move like that.

"My mother's a witch." the older boy replied easily. Corvo twisted his mouth.

"Are you lying?"

"No."

"I think you are. You don't look like a witch."

" _ I'm _ not the witch, my mother is."

"You'd look like one too ‘cause she's your mama."

"Witches don't look like you'd think."

Corvo wanted to ask more, but the bell rang and they were ushered indoors. He told his mama, when he was home, about the boy with the quick hands and the witch-mother. She twisted her mouth. "You mustn't say things like that, my peach."

"But he said it to me-"

"He shouldn't, either. He'll get his mother in a lot of trouble."

The next day, Corvo told the boy "My mama says you shouldn't tell people your mama's a witch."

"You said you didn't believe me."

"I don't, but you shouldn't say it at all, 'cause you'll get your mama in trouble."

The boy shrugged. "If Overseers come, we'll just move somewhere else. I never had to go to school before we came here. Maybe I won't if we leave."

"Don't you like it?"

"No."

"Oh… Do you want to come and play with me after? I know a way onto the roofs."

The boy had sharp, pale eyes when he turned them on Corvo. "Why?"

Corvo shrugged. "Don't you want to?"

"You're too young."

"To play?"

"To play with me."

"No I'm not."

"You couldn't keep up with me."

"I could!"

"You couldn't, you've got little legs."

"Well so do you!"

"I  _ don't _ . I'm older than you."

"You don't look like it, you're not tall enough."

The other boy grabbed him so suddenly Corvo didn’t see him move, and pushed him to the ground where they tussled on the dusty paving stones until a teacher hauled them off each other. When the day was over, children all pouring out into the afternoon sun, Corvo found the boy waiting for him at the gate. "Well?" he said expectantly. Corvo felt oddly pleased to lead him through narrow streets to the abandoned courtyard with its overgrown orange tree, the old, thick boughs easy to climb. The boy was quicker than anyone else Corvo had climbed with; he got to the roof first, but only just. Corvo wasn’t quite brave enough, the moments he got close, to grab him by the back of his shirt and haul him off balance like he would with some of his other friends.

"There's a pigeon nest over there.” Corvo pointed to a few rooftops away “Maybe there's eggs by now. We could share them."

An alarmed parent fluttered off the nest as they rounded the corner to it, cooing and marching up and down on a window ledge out of their reach. Corvo took an egg in each hand, feeling the delicate shells still warm.

"Let me see," the boy took one from him, frowning at it in his hand "Pigeons have eggs any time they want. The chicks might be too grown inside, and you have to eat them before the mother’s put too much effort into them." he put it carefully back into the nest.

"Why?"

"Just do."

Somewhat reluctantly Corvo put his egg back and watched the boy arrange them just as they had been found. He said “You can check, if you have a candle. My mother showed me.”

“Is that a witch trick?”

“It’s just a candle.”

They tried to chase some other birds and, when they failed miserably, turned on each other, scrabbling across flat stones and slanting tiles and leaping perilous drops with abandon. Only when someone grew tired of their crowing and thundering feet were they chased off to flee through the streets, trying to trip each other as they went.

Corvo eventually caught sight of the sky beginning to colour with sunset, and realised he was very late, and probably in trouble. "I should go home now."

"Where do you live?"

"That way, towards the ridge. Where do you?"

"I'm not supposed to tell people."

"If you didn't go around telling them your mama's a witch," Corvo elbowed him "Maybe it wouldn't matter."

The other boy shrugged, hands in his pockets, kicking the ground with his tall, scruffy boots. Corvo asked, after a pause "What's your name?"

"Daud."

"I'm Corvo."

"I knew that. Do you want to do this tomorrow? I know somewhere else you can get onto a roof."

They agreed, and Corvo ran off down the street, sparing a backwards glance at the boy who stood and watched him go.

They met at the gate day after day (most days; Daud disappeared when Corvo’s other friends were there, and Corvo felt so strangely proud and disappointed, like he’d tamed a wild animal that wouldn’t let him show it off) until it had been two weeks, then a month, and the eggs in the pigeon nest were tufty, hesitant young birds. They clambered awkwardly and obliviously over each other even when Corvo snuck right up to the nest. He wanted to take one home. 

"Someone'll eat it when you're not looking." Daud said, and bared his teeth in a grin "Maybe it'll be me." 

So Corvo left them in their nest.

There were plenty of other things to distract him; he had only ever found a few places to climb, ones close to home for the most part, but Daud seemed to have an eye for them, and a mother who let him wander farther than Corvo’s did. When Corvo told him he wasn’t allowed to go beyond their suburb without permission, he just scoffed as he took Corvo’s hand “It’s only over the ridge.” he dragged him through the gateway that marked their district's end “She won’t know.”

Only over the ridge became halfway across Karnaca. Places Corvo had never conceived of going turned out to be as easy to visit as hopping on the back of a cart too full for the driver to notice extra passengers, and letting it carry them far and wide. With Daud's steady, quick hands holding him while he was learning the balance, Corvo never feared. The guards narrowed their eyes at two scruffy boys on the fancier streets, but everywhere had alleyways to slip into; Daud would tap on his arm and they would be away, giggling down backstreets, before a guard could so much as shout. There were fruit trees to pilfer from, Corvo precariously balanced on Daud's shoulders to reach; there were fountains that Daud would lead them past and then suddenly grab Corvo, trying to throw him in before their shrieks of laughter as they wrestled brought the weary guards; there were canal boats to sneak onto to see if they could find the plug that would sink them; and there were the rooftops. Daud took him where the buildings towered and Corvo's arms shook by the time they'd gotten to the top of them, to look out across the city. It showed Corvo, for the first time, how truly vast the world must be.

When he spoke about it to Daud, the other boy replied "Think how much you could see from the top of Shindaerey. I want to climb it someday."

"Will you take me?"

"If I'm still here. We'd have to be a lot older."

"W- are you leaving?" Corvo's heart dropped to his stomach like it never had before, but Daud shook his head.

"No. I told mother I like it here. She said, if I'm good, we can stay."

"Oh." Corvo took a moment to let the dread filter out of him, exhaling in a quiet huff "I'm glad. Do you like school now, then?"

"No," Daud took Corvo's hand, pulling him on towards the next rooftop "But I like you."

He never found out where Daud lived. Sometimes he thought he could guess when they visited one place more than others, but then Daud would grow bored of the same climbs and say "I want to go over there" and they would leave their previous haunts behind. Daud taught him to steal from market stalls and even picked the pocket of a guard for a fat gold coin they couldn't decide what to buy with. Daud wanted things no one would sell to two boys under twelve, and Corvo wasn't sure one coin would buy it anyway; in the end, when they'd carried it around for three days, Corvo whined and wheedled until Daud harrumphed and put it into his hand.  _ "Fine.  _ But I won't steal you another one." He stood awkwardly in the background as Corvo gave it to the filthy old man who lived under a tree they passed most days.

The only place Daud wouldn't go were the Overseer offices scattered through the city. He wouldn't even pass them on the street, slinking into dark doorways or gardens or climbing walls to get away before wandering patrols of them approached.

"You don't think," Corvo dangled for a moment, before he felt Daud catch his legs, and he dropped down from the wall to the canal-side street "That they notice you more because you run away?"

Daud shrugged. "Doesn't matter if they don't catch me."

"I don't think they're trying to."

"Overseers trick you. If I'm not careful and they find me, mother would make us leave." he took Corvo's hand, and they went to find somewhere to swim.

"Who's he?"

Daud looked up from the marbles, casting about. Corvo pointed. Daud frowned. "Don't know, why?"

"He's looking at you."

They both eyed the man at the schoolyard's gate. He was a nondescript sort of person - bland to look at. He returned their gazes calmly, then motioned. Daud sat up. "What does he want?"

"Don't know." Corvo chewed his lip and added a hesitant "He doesn't look nasty. Or like an Overseer."

"Suppose." Daud considered; then he went back to the marbles "Well _ I _ don't care. Do you?"

"Nah. Do the spinny thing again."

Daud wasn't waiting for him when Corvo came out at the end of the day. He cast about, wondering if Daud had gotten in trouble again, before he caught sight of something, just for a moment. A boy with dark hair and a familiar shirt turning a corner beside a man. It could have been anyone, really; Corvo hesitated, and by the time he'd run down the street to peer around the corner, he couldn't see them.

Daud didn't come to school the next day. Or the next. Or the next. Corvo came home on the third day and when his mama asked him "How was your day, my peach?" he burst into tears.

On the fourth day, there was a woman at the gate when school was let out that Corvo didn't recognise. She had olive skin, and a long face with a strong chin, her dark hair tied back into a braid. She was neat and ordinarily dressed, but Corvo noticed her hands - they had faint stains on them, like grass stains, and it made him think of Daud telling him about the green under his nails - "Crushing herbs for my mother."

"Is that for witchy stuff?"

"Yes. You know, you're the only person I've ever told who doesn't mind."

So he went up to her, fiddling nervously with his shirt front. As he came close, he saw that her eyes were red-rimmed. "Excuse me?" he peeped. Her gaze flashed to him as fast as a striking snake. "Are you Daud's ma-mother?"

"Yes." her voice was rich and low and hoarse "Have you seen him?"

"Well, not today. He's not been for four days. After that man-"

"Man? What man?" her voice rose - people looked over at them. Corvo twisted his shirt tight in his hands.

"There was a man that came and I- I thought I saw them leave together."

"What did he look like? Was he an Overseer?" she demanded, all her attention on him like the heat from an open stove.

"No, he was just… I don't know. He was just a man."

She took a deep, shaking breath, covering her face with her hands for a moment.

"When you find him," Corvo ventured in the quiet between them "Can you stay in Karnaca? There's so much of it, you could hide from the Overseers and never be found, I bet. He's my best friend. Even if he doesn't come to school, he could still stay, couldn't he?"

She offered him a slow smile, one that would almost have fooled him, if not for the fresh tears blurring her dark eyes. "He's been telling you things, has he?"

"I don't mind. He's my friend."

"Outsider watch over you, little one. Take this." and she pressed something into his hand. It was warm, and sharp; he looked down at it as she said "Keep it secret and it will bring you luck."

It was a star made of small, slender bones wound together with copper wire. When he looked back up, she was gone. He stood there for a long time, until everyone else had left. Then he tucked the bones away in a pocket and ran home to tell his mama - but when he came into the house, there was a strange noise that made him quiet. He found her sitting on her bed, crying.

"There's something I have to tell you, Corvo," she drew him into her lap, brushing the hair from his eyes and sniffing "It's about papa."

The funeral came too fast for Corvo to understand, the world in a blur around him of people visiting and his mama's quiet sobs at night and his own hollow head and heart. He wanted to visit the places Daud had taken him, but he didn't want to leave his mama alone when she was crying so much. He didn't know how long it had been by the time she told him "You know Giorgio and Katerina, don't you? Well we're going to go and stay near them for a little while, because I need some help with things, and they're going to help."

"When?"

"Soon, I think."

"But- how will Daud find me when he comes back?"

"I'm sure his mother will help him, everyone will know where we've gone."

He accepted that answer quietly, and helped her to pack everything they had. On the last day at school, someone he had spent a lot less time with since Daud's arrival told him "I heard your pa died because you made friends with the witch's son and now the Outsider's after you". Corvo punched them in the nose like Daud had shown him to, and ran home, and didn't feel so bad about leaving any more. 

As they made their way into the city with all their furniture in tow, Corvo proudly in charge of the bag with his books in it, he watched rooftops he knew pass by, but never once saw the figure he was hoping for perched against the blue sky.


	2. Chapter 2

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Childhood is a fleeting thing, and that is a fact that is impossible to know until it's too late.

Batista was different from the city's-edge suburb Corvo had known before. Most of the other kids here reminded him more of Daud, their hands rough with working, their eyes keen and skilled already. None of them were nearly so quick as he had been, though - and none of them made Corvo so happy with nothing but a rooftop, some figs, and a view.

He made good use of the things he'd been taught, and set to learning more like he never had in school (and the streets were his school now, they hadn't the money for one any more and there wasn't one in Batista to send him to anyway). He'd come to many of the tricks of the trade late for a Batista kid, but his teacher had been good, so he kept up. More than that, he would go further afield than many when he wanted to bring home something extra for his mama, who missed their old house that flooded with sunset light in the evenings - he visited the places where Daud had taught him sleight of hand. It was harder to do without a second pair of eyes to watch his back, but in Batista people were on the lookout more. And he hoped, and wished, and dreamed some nights, that he'd go there one day and find Daud juggling stolen oranges and grinning that wolfish grin at him.

His mama was suspicious of his hauls at first, but when she was counting their money and crying into one of papa's good shirts, so well worn it was softer than silk, she wouldn't turn her nose up at a few pockets' worth of something nice. So Corvo ran with the rest of the kids, who all seemed to live in a limbo, just waiting to grow up and become another face in a faction throwing rocks for no reason other than that it was what everyone else was doing.

"You're quick, little man," someone Corvo had never spoken to, but knew from the way they swaggered about the district like they were the duke himself, said to him one day "From down by the cliff, aren't you? How about you do me a little favour, and I'll give you something nice to take home to your mother."

Running with parcels wrapped in brown paper he learnt quickly not to ask about the contents of; distracting guards or watchdogs; smashing windows or painting slander onto shopfronts in the night; Corvo liked doing something useful, and bringing home coin or a loaf. It kept him busy, kept his mind working, as he came to dread idle hours and the inevitable drift of his thoughts to grief.

His papa was dead and he missed him terribly, achingly, awfully; but he didn't know what had happened to Daud, and the hope mixed with the relentless jab of questions that wouldn't die to make something horrible in his chest. He thought he'd go mad from not knowing.

One day a woman found him crouched in a hallway, lifting her brows at his little candle and lap filled with pigeon's eggs. "How would you like something very special for helping me out?" she held out a purse and shook it so it jingled.

Of course he said yes. He thought about all the things he could buy his mama with a whole purse. The woman had him meet her late in the evening, on the very edge of Batista. There was an apartment building like any other; they went to the roof, tied a rope around Corvo's middle, and lowered him over the side. "Second from the top, the open window," the woman told him "Stuff your bag with anything good, then tie it to the rope so I can bring it up and empty it and pass it back. We got an hour."

The apartment he climbed into had seen better days, certainly, but it must have been something to see in those days, with wallpaper that had gilding still visible where it wasn't too faded or dirty, big, cushy leather chairs, bookshelves that went to the ceiling - and although Corvo's eyes flickered over the trophies that sat between the books, polished like they were brand new, what really caught his attention were the swords. They covered the walls in racks, sat on stands on every available surface, with gleaming hilts and scabbards all the colours of the rainbow. Corvo sucked in a breath, wondering how he was supposed to get any of them into the little rucksack he'd been given, and if somehow he could take one for himself. 

A soft noise drew his gaze reluctantly to the corner. With a cold shock he realised there was a man there, his dark skin hiding him in the deep shadows. He was old and lined, fast asleep in a chair with a cane in his hands, the clothes on his body much like his home; smart, but well used. His hair was almost the only reason Corvo noticed him; bone white and short, it seemed to defy gravity, standing straight up from his head to give his already long and slender form another inch at least. Corvo sucked in a slow breath. He'd never actually done a robbery like this before. Still, he had heard enough to know mostly what to do, and slipped silently into the kitchen to start with the silverware.

The man must have gotten up the second Corvo turned his back. He'd barely pulled open a drawer before his feet were swept out from under him with the cane. He rolled away in a flash, skittering backwards on all fours, to find the old man standing like a fencer, cane pointed right at him. "Well, boy?" he demanded in an accent Corvo couldn't place "What a predicament you've found yourself in, eh? But I’ll make a deal with you; humour me, and I'll tell no one I found you after my forks."

Corvo eyed the cane. The man held it as still as stone, not a tremble all its smooth length. "Okay."

"There's swords behind you. Pick one."

Corvo glanced behind him; three more swords sat in a tiered display rack, one sheathed in black, one in deep red, and one in the kind of blue that shimmered out of darkness like magpie feathers. Corvo lifted it gently off the stand, holding the sheathe, hesitant.

"Take it off, then, it won't balance correctly with that."

"I don't want to hurt you, sir."

"Haha! Nice boy, are you? You won't. Hold it like I do."

Corvo drew the shimmering blade free and stared at it incredulously. It's surface was covered in swirls of dark and light grey, a chaotic pattern that drew his eye almost too much to resist. But the presence of the man with the cane was rather pressing, so he tried to copy the position. The man moved so fast Corvo barely even saw; he slapped Corvo's leg with the cane and sent him sprawling, muffling a grunt of pain. "Too far forwards. You've got no balance. Up, come on, I expect some effort in recompense for you trying to rob an old man."

"You don't act that old." Corvo grumbled as he got back up, and the man threw back his head and laughed. Seeing his moment, Corvo lunged, trying to poke him - as gently as possible, horribly aware of the blade and how sharp a good sword like this could be - in the belly. The man knocked Corvo's strike away before his head had even come all the way forward from laughing, but there was a glint in his eye.

"Oh! The cheek of it! Most people wait for their opponent to be ready. It's  _ honourable." _

"In Batista, we just want to win."

"You're smarter in Batista, then. The honourable thing in a swordfight will get you dead, and that's about it."

There was something, to Corvo's surprise, that he liked about the flash of the man's white teeth when he grinned.

"Come on, then, boy," he brandished his cane "Give me your best shot."

When they had clashed and leapt and tumbled their way around the whole apartment, and Corvo had noticed the routine in the old man's movements - the way he put his feet, the positions he took with his cane, showing Corvo how to do it and then allowing him the turn to try it all himself - his arm was aching, he was sweating, he would be bruised from all the taps of the cane, and the rope he had come in on was gone. The old man sat down heavily in his chair with thorough applause, shaking his head in delight. "I could make something of you," he fixed Corvo with his bright, birdlike eyes "I could make you into a master swordsman, how would you like that?"

"I'd love that." Corvo looked at all the weapons surrounding them, the fancy furniture, the trophies "Who are you?"

"You'll call me 'sir'," the old man tapped his cane on the ground a few times, still humming with energy that his stiffening joints wouldn't let him expel "And I don't want to know your name, either. We shan't be here to make friends - we will learn, and give ourselves as tribute to the one who watches over all things."

"The Outsider?"

The man clicked his tongue. "In Pandyssia, there are stories that remember the time before the Outsider, when the black behind the stars could be appeased with dagger dancing." he rapped his cane on the floor again "But those are not stories you will ever need to know. Come back here, I don't care when, and I'll teach you to be the best swordsman in the Isles and Pandyssia both.  _ But!" _ he pointed his stick at Corvo "Don't go dirtying your hands with robbery anymore! I don't teach thieves. Honour might be a load of rotten whale's guts, but don't let that make you think you've got no reason to be good to people. You will work for the dishonest in your life, that can't be helped, but keep  _ your  _ self and  _ your _ work honest. Understand?"

"I… can try. But we don't have a lot of money."

"Then try. Go on home."

Corvo put the sword back into its stand with careful reverence and left, already thinking of when he would be back.

He didn’t tell his mama that he was going to a stranger’s house to be smacked with a cane and learn to fight with a sword in case she worried, although she noticed the extra bruises and frowned. He would smile at her, and tell her she should see the other kid. She would chide him, brush his hair back from his forehead, and he would feel that secretly (very secretly) she was proud of him. 

As for the old man’s request, he tried his best to stick to it, unless the pay for the errand in question was really too good to pass up, or offered by someone Corvo knew better than to turn down. His mother seemed no more upset about their finances - so Corvo realised that most of his work had been for his own sake, merely to occupy his thoughts. Now that he had this new skill to pick up, he could pass a few hours in a quiet place with only a stick and his mind.

And in that way, years passed.

It was spring, and he was sitting eating bread still soft and warm from the oven, honestly got, to a growing sense of pride in him, when he heard a sound. He looked down just in time to see the bone charm Daud's mother had given him no longer in his pocket, but bouncing on the tiles and disappearing over the edge of the roof. He scrabbled, racing for the drainpipes he'd used to get up there, muttering 'no, no, no!' as he went. He landed up in a decrepit half alley, half courtyard where the only plants were weeds, and the iron spines topping the walls to keep urchins like him from climbing in were collapsed. He rifled through foliage, looking for the white glint of bone.

A quiet voice close by. He jolted; heard a key in the gate behind him. There was just enough time for him to drag himself up and onto a ledge he could skirt around the corner out of sight on.

"Come on." a nondescript voice said under the creak of the gate swinging open. Corvo peered back, out of his insatiable curiosity, to see a man with a boy beside him. A boy with dark hair, and a body caught between the gangling limbs of a child’s growth and his solid, wide bones and short legs-

Daud's face gave Corvo both a shock of delight and deep fear of the uncanny; something familiar tainted with the a strangeness. He didn't look around. He stared at the ground with blank eyes and dark shadows under them, as the man closed the gate with the kind of careful quiet that could never mean anything good. He glanced up at the building Corvo was hiding on, and then tried the key in his hand on a low basement window. It worked. He turned to Daud.

"We're not going to have any trouble today are we, Daud?" he said in a low voice that Corvo almost didn't catch. Daud shook his head. The man produced something from under his coat, and held it out.

It was a knife.

As Daud went to take it, the man pulled it back for a moment. "Because if we do, you're getting a little big for this line of work, aren't you? If you try and pull a fast one on me again, I think I can cut my losses right here, and you'll be a lucky bastard if I wring your little neck. Get in there." he put the knife into Daud's hand, and pushed him down through the little window.

Corvo was old enough, in city kid standards, to feel the full force of a threat like that. Under his utterly stunned stupor, anger bubbled - but it just as quickly gave way to an overwhelming pride. Daud’s eyes, dim as they were, had not looked away from the man’s, who had had nothing more to say to the defiance in them.

Holding his breath, Corvo watched the man pace the yard. For one moment, he went to the gate and peered out the gap where it didn't quite meet the wall. Corvo had never been so fast and so quiet in his life - he slid like a shadow down and in through the window after Daud.

The basement was chilled and dark, but an open door at the far end showed a shaft of light. Corvo crept out into a nice enough hallway, with framed newspaper pieces as decoration on the walls. It was utterly quiet, but for the ticking of a clock by the front door. "Daud!" he hissed, his hammering heart overtaking his sense "Daud!"

The quiet stretched. He padded to an open doorway, peered in, saw nothing, headed for the stairs and-

Daud stood at the top, gripping the knife, staring at him. The mask of emptiness that had made his face so strange and lifeless was replaced by vivid shock. “Corvo?”

Corvo didn’t care if the house belonged to a captain of the guard. He raced up the stairs and threw himself at Daud, wrapping his arms around him and smothering laughter against his chest. “I found you!” he whispered, looking up into Daud’s wide eyes and beaming “You can come away with me now!” 

“How did you-” Daud’s hands came up, gripping Corvo’s arms.

“I just saw you- come on, let’s just go, we’ll sneak past that man-”

He was pulling and Daud came with him like he was in a dream. In the basement, they crouched beneath the window, Corvo peering up to check the yard. The man was in a corner, puffing on a cigarette, just as jumpy as before. He got up, paced, sat back down, came up to the window and made Corvo duck, both boys pressed to the wall, holding their breath and each other’s hands as he peered in. At last, he went to check the gate as he had before. Corvo shoved Daud, sending him up first. He had to squirm, Corvo heaving his legs from below, then he was giving Corvo a hand to drag himself up on.

They were quiet, but there was no way to be fast enough. The man turned to see Daud with Corvo most of the way out, and he just stared dumbly at them, not sure what to make of it. Daud froze; Corvo, who knew only the man’s threats, had a boldness borne of only ever getting into fights with other children. He grabbed the first thing he found; a length of iron rod from the old railings.

It wasn’t much of a sword compared to the beautiful things he’s been learning with, too short and too heavy by far, but he spun it deftly, mostly because he wanted to show off in front of Daud. The man realised what was going on and growled, pulling a thick machete out of his belt. “Daud.” he warned. Daud grabbed Corvo’s belt, trying to pull him back and away, but Corvo pushed his hand off.

“You can leave now, and we all go our separate ways, or I can break your shins.” Corvo tilted his chin up “And I’d rather break your shins.”

The man laughed incredulously. “Well aren’t you a little-”

Corvo was on him like a striking viper. The man howled as the iron bar jabbed him hard in the groin, losing his footing, flailing with his machete as he fell to one knee. Corvo brought the bar down with all his strength on the man’s leg, planning to make good on his word, and imagining that they’d leave him there to be found by whoever owned the house they’d just left and the Grand Guard - but he was thrown off balance by the man’s wild, slashing swings. Corvo parried one that came too close and felt the force of the blow shake his bones. The adrenaline rush took on a cold edge as he parried another vicious hacking motion, and barely managed to hold it back. He retreated, the man struggled back to his feet, his pained hunch doing little more than bringing the fury on his face closer than Corvo wanted it. It wasn’t a swordfight as Corvo knew it - he was a nail and the man was the hammer determined to flatten him.

He started to get scared.

And then Daud swung another rod.

It hit the man across the head with a crack Corvo didn’t understand and sent him sprawling with barely a groan. Then Daud brought the rod down on him again, and again, and again, and the cracking sounds turned wet, and the blood started to spurt, and the dull thud of the iron mixed with the squelch mixed with Daud’s voice breaking upwards as he slammed the rod down again and again and again and again and again-

“Stop it!” Corvo caught his hands, smeared red and warm. He pulled Daud back and wrestled the rod away from him, made it clang on the ground beside them. Their hands were shaking both, sliding in the blood as Corvo gripped Daud tightly. Daud stared down at the body, and Corvo, after half a glance that almost brought up his breakfast, turned him away. “We have to go. We- we should wash somewhere.” Daud came with him without a word. They scurried, stumbling and bumping into each other as they went hand in hand, the sounds of the world tinny and distant around them until they found a canal. There was nothing to be done about Daud’s stained shirt - Corvo helped him out of it and threw it behind a dumpster, took off his own and used it to wipe the splatter off of Daud’s face. Daud looked at him with his grey eyes, shallow as glass.

“Corvo.”

“Yeah?” he dipped the shirt in the canal, dabbing carefully at Daud’s pale skin, gone startlingly grey.

“You found me.”

“Yeah.”

Daud’s hands slowly gripped his wrists. “I have to go home.”

“Okay. I’ll take you there. Where is it?”

Daud led him all the way in silence still. They hadn’t let go of each other since Corvo had pulled Daud from the body, and their hands held white-knuckled together while they walked with their bodies knocking every step. Now that his shirt was gone, Corvo could see long, thin bruises and welts across Daud’s back.

“Did the man do it?” Corvo asked, touching Daud’s shoulder above one of the purple marks. Daud didn’t look at him, and didn’t respond.

They eventually ended up not that far from their old school, at a small house wedged between others that had no front door. Daud led him around the back to a decently sized yard with pots standing all over, filled with flowers. But as Corvo was thinking how nice it looked, Daud had stopped dead. “That’s not my mother’s-” he looked at the place like he didn’t recognise it.

“It’s been years, maybe she’s put in new stuff.” Corvo offered. As they stood there, one of the house’s windows opened, and an elderly woman leant out, flapping a sheet. She spotted them and paused.

“Hello, boys,” she called “You alright?”

Daud turned and fled.

“It’s okay,” Corvo held him on the soft grass under one of the redwood trees where they had finally stopped running, while he sobbed into Corvo’s shoulder “We’ll find her. She won’t have gone far. She came looking for you, you know, she was crying, I spoke to her. She wouldn’t’ve left you behind.”

The sky was turning to dusk before Daud’s tears subsided. He clung to Corvo and whimpered “Where am I gonna go?” against him.

“You can come home with me,” Corvo squeezed him. He’d had that in mind to begin with. “I’ll take care of you.”

Corvo’s mama was all of a flutter when they made it home after dark, but her chastisements died on her lips when she registered the details on the two boys before her. There was still blood on their hands, Daud’s cheeks were still wet and his eyes red. Corvo put an arm protectively around him.

“This is Daud. He has to stay with us. We don’t know where his mother’s gone.”

She looked between them and her face went soft. She said "Of course." and started bustling about immediately, readying a bath for them first and foremost. When Daud took off his trousers and underwear, Corvo saw the welts and bruises carry on, all the way down, to the backs of his knees. 

"I have stuff for bruises." Corvo offered as they sat in the warm water together, scrubbing his fingers in Daud's hair, his fingernails coming out black. Daud bent over for him to reach, until his head was pressed to Corvo's chest; Corvo poured cupped handfuls of water gently over the wounded mess, using the special soft face towel they kept for guests to dab it all clean. After a meal, which mama wouldn't let them leave until Daud had had seconds, and a hot drink of something that always helped Corvo sleep when he was ill, Daud lay on Corvo's bed in his little room and let him smear on the cream that the old man had given him for all the knocks he got in his lessons. It clearly hurt the raw welts because he kept flinching, but he smothered all the sounds. When it all was done, Corvo pulled the thin blanket over them, and lay down beside him. He couldn’t tell if Daud was asleep or not, but he talked anyway, as he held one of Daud’s hands on the pillow between them. “I’ll protect you better from now on. I’m really good at sword fighting, I promise, with a real sword I’m much better. I’ve never had a real fight with them before, only practised. Sir said he’d teach you too you know, because I told him about you. We could learn together. He said, he could teach me to be the best swordsman in all the world, so I can go and win the Blade Verbena, right? Well you can be that good too, so you could go and win it the year before me or something, then we can go all around the Isles as the best swordsmen in the world…”

How much of it Daud heard didn’t matter; Corvo just hoped his voice might stop bad dreams from coming.

“This the famous Daud, then?”

The old man fixed him with an appraising eye as Corvo led him into the apartment. Daud’s eyes flickered from the man to the swords on the walls, struggling to take his wary eyes off a stranger. Corvo could feel him tense through their joined hands - he rubbed reassuringly with a thumb.

“I’ve heard you’re a quick boy. How would you like,” the old man tapped his way along the swords until he found a short one with a wooden hilt and an elegant curve to the end of the blade “To slap someone about a bit?”

The old man, Corvo realised, just had a knack for bringing people out of their shells. He perched on a windowsill and watched them dance around the room, Daud’s frown of concentration morphing from wary and unsure to a gleaming determination that lit his whole face. He never got past the old man’s quick cane, but there were chips out of it by the time they finished. Daud was flushed, trembling with exertion, his eyes glowing like they hadn’t since Corvo had found him. They had lost their hollow and haunted look with quiet nights spent whispering each other to sleep, holding hands under the pillow, and days spent in the sun when Corvo was determined to remind Daud of all the things they used to do and the fun they used to have. But they had taken on something deep and unfathomable instead - Corvo was happy to see light returned to them.

The old man made them fresh orange juice and took them out onto the flat roof where they could sit in the shade of a vine-covered trellis. “I shan’t move these for a week after this,” he said cheerfully, gesturing to his knees, as he took a seat “But he was right, you’re a quick one. Absolutely vicious. Don’t make that face, vicious is a good thing, it’s a sword, not a feather duster. Swords are for maiming and killing, that’s why they were invented, that’s why we still use them.” he gestured “You’re a little stiff. How does your back treat you?”

“I hurt it.” Daud said quickly, before Corvo’s open mouth could speak “It’ll be fine.”

“Indeed. Well, don’t overdo it. Come back here whenever you like and I’ll have you both running rings around the finest guardsman in the city before you’ve ten chest hairs between you. Let the juice settle and then take those sticks and see if you can’t take my  protégé  here down a notch.”

As they left with the sunset, Daud admitted “He’s good, isn’t he?”

“I like him a lot,” Corvo watched pigeons bobbing at each other on windowsill “He’s better at teaching than anyone back in school was.”

“I like what he said about fighting. It’s not a sport, it’s about killing before you’re killed. There aren’t rules, not in the real world.”

“Depends on where you’re fighting,” Corvo said, slightly uneasy. He’d always liked it when the old man said that, too, but hearing it from Daud was… different.

“Do you see him every day?”

“Well, a couple times a week. I have to do some jobs and stuff as well.”

“I guess. I’ll just have to go extra, to catch up with you.”

Corvo could feel him itching for it every day as they did chores in the house or ran simple errands. Daud had a criteria for the jobs he would do that Corvo couldn’t work out, or maybe he just got a bad feeling about certain people - whenever someone he didn’t like would get Corvo to do something for them, Daud would disappear, and Corvo would go and find him at the old man’s house if it wasn’t too late, or else meet him coming home with new bruises and bright eyes. The marks from before gradually went away for the most part, except for a few white ribbons here and there that he religiously treated with an oil Corvo’s mama got for him, meant to make scars fade. When the other kids would go swimming, and had started to say things about why Daud always left instead of joining in, Corvo would wait until they were curled up together in bed (the bed that been Corvo’s but that he no longer thought of as  _ his, _ only as  _ theirs)  _ he would touch the marks very gently, and tell Daud he thought he was the bravest person in the world.

With good food, Daud was starting to grow into his big bones, and when he pulled Corvo tightly into his arms it was like snuggling into a thick blanket on a cold night, but even better, because Corvo wanted nothing more than to make Daud happy like they had been before he was taken away.

It was to that end that Corvo got his hands on two wooden swords. The old man wouldn’t let them take away real ones, and the canes he let them use on each other were too fancy to be entrusted to them beyond his supervision. But with two stolen planks, a friendly carpenter’s assistant who was still young enough not to be tired of his craft and had had his lost cat returned to him by Corvo and Daud, the replicas were pretty good. The balance wasn’t perfect, so Corvo told Daud, when he presented him with them, not to tell the old man about them. Daud practically glowed. When he hugged Corvo, he lifted him up off the ground, and Corvo was thinking about it for weeks.

They spent two years as the menaces of Batista, until there wasn’t a person under twenty who’d dare utter a bad word about them to their faces. The rest of the world seemed hazy and unimportant; all that mattered was the strength of a sword in his hand, and the warm, solid presence of Daud at his side, at his back, bearing down on him as they sparred. Corvo ran rings around people; Daud battered them down in hails of violent blows. Corvo knew that Daud could be as lithe and quick as he could, but that was, to his pride, just for them and their sparring matches, when Daud needed more finesse if he wanted to get one up on Corvo’s catlike grace. Corvo was getting gangly, his uncoordinated youth struggling against the control of all his practice. Daud told him he had arms like eels, and Corvo told him he needed a magnifying glass to find his legs. “What are you flinching from? What are you flinching from? There’s nothing there!” Daud crowed as he chased Corvo around a fountain, kicking furiously. Corvo tripped him into the fountain, where he knocked his nose and turned the water pink with his blood, and Corvo felt so bad about it he offered Daud a free hit.

“Don’t be stupid,” Daud hung over a canal, pinching the bridge of his nose and letting the blood flow down his face and drip off his chin into the water “What would I get from punching you?”

“I dunno, justice.”

“Remember what the old man says. _ Neither revenge nor violence is justice.” _

Corvo gave him a shove. “When have you  _ ever  _ listened to that?”

“Never.” Daud laughed “But he was right, wasn’t he, when he said you don’t realise it 'till someone you love is the one on trial.”

“I guess,” Corvo put his chin in his hand, not really understanding, looking out across Karnaca gleaming in the sun.

Daud changed very suddenly in the winter. He had gone oddly quiet for a week, and changed the subject when Corvo tentatively asked about it. Corvo asked his mama; she said “He’s growing up, my peach, there’s a lot on your mind when you’re that age.”

_ “I’m _ growing up,” Corvo protested. She gave him a knowing smile.

“Thirteen is not the same as sixteen, I’m afraid.”

The height between them was more pronounced than ever. Three years was a big difference for two children, but Corvo had never felt it so keenly as now. His mama told him he’d grow up like her father, a tall, lithe man who hated boats since he sailed to Serkonos from Driscol, and kept almost getting blown off the side. Daud was going to be as wide as he was tall from the looks of things, and Corvo felt glumly like he’d never catch up.

But one day Daud put down the book he’d been struggling through, and said “Corvo. I’m going to leave soon.”

Corvo looked up. “What?”

“I want to find my mother.”

Any other answer Corvo would have preferred; he couldn’t argue against this one. “Oh.”

“She wouldn’t just have left without... I think if I look hard enough…”

They sat in silence for a while, Corvo wrestling with the grief that was clawing inside his chest like a feral cat. “I could come with you.”

“You know what your mother would say.”

He did, and he knew that never in a thousand years would he run away from her. He pulled his knees up to his chin. “I wish you’d wait until I could.”

“I do, too. But it’s been too long already. If there is a trail to follow, I can’t wait for it to go any colder than it already has.”

“Yeah. Sorry. I just-” he pretended he was scratching to try and hide the tears. Daud put a hand on his back, then around his shoulders, and drew him against his side.

“I won’t be gone forever. You won’t have to rescue me this time.”

Corvo felt bad for leaving a silence in the wake of what was clearly an attempt at cheering him up, but he knew if he made a sound he'd start to weep.

Corvo wanted his mama to tell Daud no, absolutely not, you’re too young, there’s no way. She didn’t. In Batista, sixteen was considered a good, sensible, even lucky age to put childhood away. She put her hands on his arms and looked into his serious face with its man’s jaw showing through the puppy fat, and smiled sadly. “Wait until the good sailing weather comes.”

“I’m only going around Serkonos-”

“It will take you as long to go overland as it will to wait to catch a ship, and be a lot easier. We’ll get you what you need in the meantime.”

Corvo almost came to wish Daud had just left then; maybe the pain would have been vicious but quick, a flash of fire in a pan then an ongoing sizzle. Instead, every moment became bittersweet. He struggled to stay awake late and to get up early to lie in the dark and listen to Daud sleeping, he turned down offered errands. He wanted to make use of every moment he had left with Daud - the only person, besides his mama, that they still went to see was the old man.

“It’s not for me to say,” he put a soft hand on Corvo’s shoulder, when Corvo asked him if he could convince Daud to stay “All you can do, when you’re grown up, is teach a child all that you have in you. They will make of it what they will, and follow your advice if they like, but probably not. He’s a young man now, and makes decisions for himself. You’ll not be far behind him, I shouldn’t think.”

They got him a good coat, new boots, a bag for the spare shirt and underwear and the big paper-wrapped bundle of food that would last. He didn’t understand the meaning behind the flask they gave him, and Corvo didn’t tell him it had been his father’s. Probably he’d feel awkward about taking it, so better he not know.

Corvo resolutely refused to talk about the terrifying and unknowable and quickly approaching future, but it dragged at him as they sat on rooftops and wandered the streets and dreaded the cheerful birth of the spring.

On the morning of the departure, Corvo’s mama pulled Daud into a hug. “You can always come home.” she told him “There’ll always be a place for you here.”

Daud sniffed thickly, and Corvo saw his hands clench into fists, but he didn’t cry. He’d sworn off it, Corvo knew, now he was grown up.

The docks were grey against a grey sky and a grey sea, the oppressive feeling of rain that wouldn’t fall weighing on all of them. There wasn’t a lot to say - they’d been preparing for this for a month. Corvo’s mama said her goodbyes and went off a small distance, to let them have a moment.

“I’ll come back.” Daud said, taking one of Corvo’s hands in his “I promise.”

“Bring your mother, when you find her.” Corvo looked into his eyes, their grey more complex and intricate than anything in the grim world around them “I bet she’d like it here.”

Daud gave him a smile. “Your mother’s a lot neater than mine, she might not like all her herbs spread everywhere.”

“She'd get used to it, if we got to be a big family.”

“I’ll do that then.”

There was an impatient noise at the end of the dock. Corvo’s heart clenched in his chest; not yet,  _ not yet. _ They hadn’t said anything profound, and he couldn’t think of what should be the last words between them. He wanted a magic spell that would string them together and pull Daud back - pull him home. “I’ll miss you. You can write to us. Remember to write to me.”

Daud pulled him into one of his big, broad, warm hugs. “I  _ promise.” _

He was indistinguishable long before he was out of sight, but Corvo stayed on the dock to watch him reach the ship, and then to watch it catch the wind, taking him slowly on out of the bay. Corvo promised himself he wouldn’t cry, and he didn’t. He just felt empty and raw, like an old torn wound cut carefully open again with perfect precision.

When the rain finally came it chased him home. He and his mama sat at the kitchen table, just the two of them, and held hands as they sipped something warm, feeling the cold, gaping absence in the empty air.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Eccentric weapons tutors is a favourite trope of mine. I don't normally write anything this long and hoo boy, you can tell, can't you? Never in my life have I ever heard of the concept of pacing, what is that, what do you mean it's essential? That sounds fake but ok


	3. Chapter 3

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You know the whole thing about the angel and the devil on your shoulders? Corvo's out to have that.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> While I often use Americanisms to try and reduce confusion, a biscuit is the hard thing you offer people alongside a cup of tea, and I Will Not Capitulate.
> 
> Nor will I beta; it's 12:44am and this is the dodgily written hill I will die on.

Corvo's mother was waiting in the doorway to greet him when he came home. She felt small and fragile when he bent down to plant a kiss on her cheek - it was almost cool to the touch, and he pulled the good shawl she was wearing tighter around her and ushered her inside. She insisted on bustling around and making the drinks herself, on treating him like a guest, shunning him from the kitchen when he tried to help. The lamps were already on in the living room when they settled down to talk. "Tell me what you've been up to, then." So he told her about Bastillian and its fig groves, about the castle of Cullero and the neat vineyards on the hills, about the wide northern plains where the horses roamed like wild things - all the places he'd seen, he, just a boy from Batista, now the famed Son of Serkonos. Banners of him in his Grand Guard uniform fluttered on official buildings in run-down districts.  _ You inspire the people, _ the Duke had said, patting Corvo's shoulder as he gaped at the prototype.  _ You prove to them that anyone can be great. _

"Mama," Corvo put his cup down at last, remembering (only just) not to wipe his fingers covered in biscuit crumbs on his uniform's trousers "The Duke offered me a new position, and I think I want to take it."

He could tell she wanted to well up with pride, but the way he'd said it made her wary. "Yes?"

"He wants to send me to Dunwall Tower."

She put her own cup down hurriedly, before she spilled it, and got up from her seat to gather him into her arms. Whether she was excited or upset Corvo couldn't really decipher from the noises she was making - he hugged her back, smelling her favourite perfume - she'd put it on, he realised, with the nice shawl he sent from Cullero and her hair done up, just for him coming home. He squeezed her until she laughed, rubbing his back. "That's wonderful," she sniffled "Oh, my peach, I'm so proud of you. I'm so proud."

"I'll visit all the time," he promised as they drew apart "The money will be better. I'll send you it all, Void knows I won't want to keep a house there. You know what Daud says about it - grey like slop."

She smiled, and dabbed at her eyes. "He'll like it more when you're there."

"And I'll make him come home and visit."

They laughed, and she offered him more biscuits, and they talked about the past.

He boarded the boat jittery with excitement, still slightly hung over from the night before, and all his cares and worries forgotten in the rush - even his visit to the old man's grave didn't weigh so heavy with the ocean swell beneath him. For the second time his mama stood on the dock and watched a boy sailing off into the unknown, only hoping he would come back to her. Corvo was drawn to the bow, thinking of all the things beyond the horizon, and feeling the little parcel tucked against his chest - the letters lovingly hoarded, more for Daud's terrible penmanship and spelling, which still made Corvo smile. The actual content of them he had memorised word for word long ago. But he pulled out one - his back to the railing and the wind, just in case - just to go over it again.

_ Corvo, _

_ Sorry about the gap, I've gone to Dunwall. Hate it here, freezing my ass off and no matter how high you climb there’s no trees or anything, just roofs, and everything’s grey like slop. Forgot what it was like with mother, always looking over our shoulders. I thought the difficult bit would be finding the clues she left me, but there’s people and Overseers and I'm dodging them all the time. I didn’t realise she was so known, I just thought if you were a heretic it was like that. If I don’t send any letters for another while, it’s just because I’m busy. I still miss you. I want to come home more than anything. _

_ D. _

Corvo fingered the worn edge of the paper. There hadn't been time for the letter he'd written, hastily scribbled as he packed his bag, to get to Daud yet - perhaps Corvo would surprise him in person. It brought a smile to his lips and a fluttering in his chest; he stared at the stretching ocean ahead and tried to imagine cold, rainy Dunwall as Daud described it.

It turned out, somehow, to be worse.

They drew in under a dense fog that had all the ships blaring their horns to keep from running into each other. It subsided into a miserable downpour in time for the disembarking, and even Corvo's spare clothes were soaked - he came to the emperor damp, smelling musty, feeling the cold air strike him to his sodden bones until he was shivering through the whole meeting and felt like a fool. After the warm magnetism of Duke Abele, Emperor Kaldwin seemed a distant figure hung up on ceremony and Gristolian etiquette. He didn't inspire much in the way of loyalty, but he was polite, Corvo supposed. Better than others, who from the first moment he stepped foot in the barracks made sure he knew what they thought of his tan lines and his name and his 'south-style manners'.

He gritted his teeth and told himself that it would be worth it. He'd earn good money, he'd go home again with a new appreciation for Karnaca's sandy colours and smothering summer heat. He'd help Daud find his mother or, as Corvo increasingly suspected, whatever else it was he was looking for that he had left out of the letters.

His first day off was usurped by a soiree for the empress, but he couldn't wait - in the evening of the next day, he set out into the streets with a tired map. It was dark by the time he found the place in a rundown part of the city, a tenement with washing lines strung between it and its neighbour across the street. Inside the dingy stairwell, one door was very like another. Corvo double checked the address - Daud seemed to send his every letter from a new one, so Corvo never bothered to memorise them - and knocked.

The only sounds came from someone leaving their apartment a few floors below. Hardly surprising, but bitterly disappointing. Still, he was prepared. Not as good as getting to see his face when he opened the door, but Corvo pushed a note he'd already written under it, and loitered a while, and then left.

The next four days he was on duty almost from dawn 'till dusk covering for a man who'd fallen off a ladder, and being just the Serkonan, the extra duty was dumped in its entirety on Corvo. He finally slipped away on the fifth day, yawning and dragging his feet all the way to the tenement.

When he knocked, and waited, everything was quiet. He twisted his mouth and looked down, disappointed again, and noticed-

The tip of a scrap of paper.

He pulled it out already knowing, already feeling dread coil up in him. It was his note, untouched in five days. Just in case, he slid it back under, and then hung around in the hall until a woman with a child on her hip emerged from a nearby door. "Excuse me-" he called to her "Do you know who lives here?"

She eyed him carefully. "No one."

"Then do you know who used to?"

She drew her child slightly closer to her. "A man, I dunno. I never spoke to him or nothing. I didn't have nothing to do with him."

"It's alright," Corvo said gently, trying to reassure "I think he's a friend of mine. When did he leave? Do you- do you know where he went?"

"Dunno," she seemed unconvinced "I just know he left."

Corvo's heart was sinking - but in a few months his mother would forward him another of Daud's letters, he just had to wait. "Well, thank you anyway. Sorry to bother you."

As he started down the stairs, she appeared at the railing. "En't good to have friends like that," she called after him "Overseers came not long after he went, asking after him. Strange man."

Corvo stumbled another thanks, and watched her go back to her apartment like she hadn't only just left it. He went back to the door and retrieved his note, cold settling in his stomach.

He wrote his mama a letter filled with optimism and void of reality, and asking only if Daud had sent any replies yet, because he must have moved again and Corvo didn't know where to find him. He'd barely sent it when he had a letter tossed at him in the morning mail round - it looked official, Karnaca's royal seal in wax on it. He supposed the Duke might be kind enough to check up on him - but whatever else it said, he only managed to get through the first line. 

_ It is with deepest, most heartfelt regret that I write to inform you of your mother's passing. _

For once, there were no snide remarks as he fled the barracks. He could barely see where he was going for the tears, or where he eventually fell - some damp corner behind a shed on the grounds, where he could curl up undisturbed and sob his sorry heart out into his knees, his voice echoing ragged in the space for long enough that the shadows had moved.

He hit a lull where his burning throat clenched silently, his voice given up. He mistook the tentative knock for just the wind at first, but then someone cleared their throat, and he looked up ready to rip it out if they were there to mock his grief.

The girl was young, but her high collar, her coat with a cinched waist, her hair done up with a pin that glittered with a gold swan on the top, all made her look much older. Corvo had seen her about enough to know who she was - he started to clamber awkwardly to his feet, but she said "no, please, don't get up for me" and so he sat there, aware of his red face and running nose and the untidy stubble he hadn't got around to shaving yet this morning. The girl's hands, clasped in front of her, fidgeted nervously.

"I didn't mean to intrude," she spoke softly, like to a startled animal "I only wondered if you were alright."

"I-" he couldn't very well brush it off when he looked like he did and had been bawling like he had "My ma- my mother's- she's-" he brushed tears from his eyes "She's passed-"

The word  _ dead _ burned through him and brought a fresh bout of sobbing he hadn't thought he still had in him. The girl came over and knelt down beside him to put a hand on his shoulder. "I'm so sorry." she rubbed his back as he tried to stifle his weeping, felt so stupid to be eighteen and needing a eleven-year-old girl to soothe him like a sage adult. He bit back the sobs, and found a handkerchief held out to him insistently. He could hardly wipe his nose on his sleeve in front of the heir to the throne, so he took it. When he looked at her to awkwardly give it back, she was the first sincere face he had seen since he left Serkonos. "Is there anything you need?"

"I'll be fine- your highness, thank you," he sniffed, struggling into something vaguely like composure. 

“If you’re sure.” she wobbled upright, so much so that he couldn't help but quickly offer her a hand to balance with. She laughed it off, showing him her shoes. "I'm not used to tall heels yet. But a future empress must start her practice early."

He bit back his immediate response -  _ who puts high heels on an eleven-year-old  _ \- and just gave her a weak smile. She paused in the doorway to give him another look. "If you're  _ sure _ you're alright?"

"Much better now," he assured her, and watched her walk very carefully away.

The commander of the Tower guard came by that evening. "Two weeks leave." he grunted, tossing the official paperwork at Corvo "Paid. Don't think this will be setting any standards. You may have made friends in high places somehow, but I will not stand for you slacking off with it."

Corvo stared incredulously at the paper.

Euhorn Kaldwin might not have been much of an inspiration, but Corvo felt he might have found someone who was.

She always had a smile for him, and asked how he was doing when she could. They were both aware that people would turn their nose up at her highness giving the Serkonan upstart a friendly greeting now and then; even the nicest of the nobles only thought it a show of humility, her deigning to pity him. Void, how he hated these people. When he was on patrol in the gardens was her favourite time -  _ if _ she could snatch some free moments from her multitude of tutors - and she would have him walk the grounds with her, pacing slowly up the gravel paths and talking of things Corvo thought far too much for a child.

"When I was eleven," he told her "I was still playing steeplechase over rooftops."

"I'm clumsy, I'd probably fall and break my neck," Jessamine laughed "I can't afford to waste a moment, when I've got so much responsibility to learn. I put my dolls away when I was ten." she looked wistfully out over the grey city and the snatch of blue sky between skidding, bulbous clouds "I haven't told anyone, but I do miss them."

Corvo felt his heart clench. Of all the people to have their childhood stolen - of all the protection the emperor  _ could _ lavish on his daughter, this was the one he denied her? So perhaps it was as much defiance, a little bit of revenge against the whole shoddy institution of noble houses and politics, as it was kindness when Corvo brought Jess a small doll from one of his days scouring the city. It had a soft body and porcelain limbs and head, and cost far more than he should have been spending - but he had more money than he knew what to do with, now there was nowhere to send it, no one to use it, and he had his food and lodging from the job. He presented it to her, somewhat sheepishly, on one of their walks. She took it as gently as if it were a real baby, and pressed it to her face; she looked, for once, like the little girl she actually was. Then she flung her arms around him, babbling "thank you so much, I love her, I love her!" until someone came to see what the ruckus was about.

"What should I call her?" she asked a few days later, as she sat on a bench with a very dull book about the history of the Abbey in her lap "She should have a Serkonan name."

Corvo listed off a few, people he'd known or known of. Then he paused. "My mother's name's Paloma."

"I think that's a lovely name. Would you mind?"

"No at all, highness." it made his heart ache, but in an okay way. The name was safe in Jess's hands; he'd told her everything there was to know about his mama, and although he didn't think it would ever stop hurting, there was still comfort to be had in sharing it.

"Thank you." she looked around, then fiddled with her shoes, kicking them off. She was better at walking in the tall heels now, but she hardly enjoyed them, taking them off at every opportunity. She rubbed her feet through the grass and made a relieved noise. "How is your search going?"

Corvo's eyes slid away for a moment. "Nothing yet." his voice was quiet "If I was in Karnaca I'd know who to ask and who to trust but it's… it's very different here."

"I suppose being a famous guardsman doesn't help." She was very canny for sheltered royalty. He hadn't ever told her he expected to find Daud in Dunwall's underbelly, but she had guessed.

"No, it doesn't. When I came, there was enough news. He should  _ know _ I'm here. Unless there's…"

_ Something wrong,  _ but he didn't need to say it out loud. They said if the Outsider heard you speak of bad things he would bring them to pass.

"If you need help, maybe I could do something, I could make some guards help you - if he's been kidnapped again, or something like that." she bounced her heels off the soft turf, and was just twelve again, dreaming of a daring rescue and a happy ending. Corvo had realistic ideas of how likely Daud was to be found on the palatable (in guardsmen and nobles' opinions) side of a conflict. If he was known to the Abbey as well… certainly best not to involve anyone else in this, least of all Jessamine. "You certainly mustn't put yourself in danger. I would miss you terribly."

"As her highness commands," he chuckled, and she went studiously back to her book.

"You can't ride?" the idea seemed to astound Jessamine.

"Not everyone can keep a horse." Corvo let the speckled pony nudge forcefully at him when Jess was busy pulling her gloves on.

"I suppose- you mustn't let him do that, that's naughty!" she pulled the pony's nose out of Corvo's pocket "But you should learn! I can't go galloping with Lady Ramsey, she says it isn't dignified. But you could take me."

"I don't think your riding teacher wants to have to bother with the Serkonan," he snorted. Jessamine went still; when he looked over he found her frowning at him.

"Just because they say that about you doesn't mean you should say it about yourself," she said quietly, taking his hand "If I ask her, she'll have to."

"I wouldn't want to-"

She was already dragging the pony away, calling for her instructor. Cringing, Corvo hung back - but the woman came striding out of the stables to look him up and down and say "I'll put you on Bentley," like it was nothing at all. "There's gloves by the door of the feed room, go on,"

Corvo decided the old man and horsemaster would have got on very well together. He felt that there wasn't much difference in the way she treated her horses and her pupils - the riding crop she carried seemed to be entirely for use on Corvo rather than the mounts. Jess thought that watching Corvo fumble under her iron gaze was hilarious - which made it all worth it, really. Jess hadn't been so much of herself for a month, but she didn't bring it up, so he supposed it wasn't his business, but it was a pain to convince himself of it. He watched Jess shepherded around by her ladies-in-waiting - a group of women not one of which was under twenty - and trying so hard to be  _ grown up, _ by their standards, her face serious to the point of severity. He always shot her a grin or made a stupid face to make her laugh and to annoy the chief lady-in-waiting, who would usher Jess away like he was the Outsider himself.

Perhaps he only felt compelled to stick his nose in her business because she was the only friendly face in Dunwall, because between dragging himself off his thin mattress in the morning and sinking down onto it at night she was the only person who didn’t look at him like they'd opened their cupboards and found a rat.

He got a belated reply to his pleading request, from a secretary to Duke Abele, informing him that they would do their very best to catch any letters intended for him that were still being sent to his mother's house. He only had to hope that they weren't too late - he sent other letters to old squadmates, but only Angelica was in Karnaca, and she told him the house was locked and had yet to be sold, but she couldn't find who was supposed to be selling it in order to get the key from them. His resolve dwindled. He found that he would be disciplined, but not given any kind of ultimatum when he broke bones in the training yard - he could have his revenge on anyone reluctantly pushed into the ring with him, and then he’d have to do their rounds and patrols. He got almost no sleep, but he saw Jessamine marginally more often for it, and it was better than wandering helplessly around the streets in a forlorn hope. He wanted nothing more than to catch the next boat home and not look back. But he’d be damned if he’d let them use it to add ‘deserter’ to the list of insults thrown at Serkonans, or if he left this shithole of a city without Daud.

The seasons ticked by imperceptibly thanks to the efforts of the Tower's gardeners to keep the grounds vibrant all year round, and by the lifelessness of Dunwall's treeless streets. Corvo felt like time was slipping away from him.

The Tower was a surprisingly quiet place; the emperor demanded it for his headaches, and everyone who spent any time there took to whispering and walking softly just in case. Corvo liked it for the sake of his job, even if it made the place feel rather creepy - he could hear a pin drop from down the hall.

So when a little girl started crying, even behind a closed door, he tracked it down easily. When he threw the doors open and demanded, in a voice loud enough to make everyone flinch, "What's going on in here?" the group within looked sharply up at him. All he cared for was the sight of Jessamine, standing in the middle of a gaggle of ladies-in-waiting, with a dramatically tear-streaked face.

"It's nothing, you can leave," Lady Ramsey, Jess's chief lady-in-waiting, waved dismissively at him. When he didn't immediately go, she frowned. "Did you hear me? Out!"

He stared at her, and then he looked at Jess. "Lady Jessamine? Are you alright?"

"She's quite well, this is nothing to do with-"

"I wasn't asking you, I was asking Her Royal Highness, who has a voice."

Jessamine swallowed and said, into the disbelieving silence of Lady Ramsey "I don't want to have my ears pierced."

"Were they forcing you?" he watched someone try and surreptitiously hide their hands behind their back.

"Yes."

"She is a  _ lady!"  _ Ramsey retorted, almost exasperated "What lady cannot wear earrings?"

"This one, if she chooses it." Corvo stepped into the room "All of you, leave."

"You can't be serious-"

"I'm a lieutenant of the royal guard, ma'am." he pointed to the door "I'm  _ very _ serious. Get out."

They all shuffled out, bar the relentless Lady Ramsey, who was spluttering about insolence - Corvo gestured at her. "You too."

"Listen here-" she was going red in the face, but Corvo's chief concern was Jess hearing the kind of obscenities he knew the woman was capable of producing about his nationality. It was Jess's voice, however, that cut him off, still thick from crying.

_ "I'm _ telling you to go." she didn't sound like her father  _ or _ her mother when she used her authority - she had her own way, and Corvo thought it sounded better than either of theirs, even when her voice was wavering. Under both of their commands, the lady-in-waiting had no choice but to leave.

Corvo sat Jessamine down on a couch. She scrubbed at her face with her handkerchief, and it came away with the coloured smudge of makeup. It had been why the tracks of her tears seemed so vivid, he was sure he'd never seen her wear quite so much before.

He sat down next to her, and pulled her against his side. "Tell me about it."

"I don't care if everyone pierces their ears," she sniffled into his coat, putting her small arms around him "I don't want to. I don't like the needles."

"Then you don't have to. You're the future empress."

"Cora said I have to, to be grown up."

"You're not even  _ thirteen  _ yet," Corvo practically bristled "You aren't grown up! Here, do you want mine-" he gave her his handkerchief (which had been hers before she gave it to him for never having his own and so often left snivelling in Dunwall's cold) and she wiped at the rest of her face.

"I don't like  _ this _ either. I like it when I get to do my own makeup, like my mother showed me, I like putting it on, but nobody lets me do it anymore, or choose the colours - and I hate these shoes - and I don't like this horrible tight waist on all my new coats, I  _ hate  _ it-" tears welled fresh in her eyes; she gave up on the kerchief, brushing them away with her sleeve instead "If this is looking like a lady, I don't want it. I don't want any of it, I want to wear my old coats and stockings."

"We'll talk to someone about it." he promised. He had no idea who, but he wasn't going to leave until they had. He helped Jess clean her face and brought her to her room, where they found that some of her old clothes were still tucked away in a drawer, and she tried her best to put them on without the help she was used to in her bathroom while Corvo stared at all the blatantly empty spaces around her room where things had been removed.

"When we've talked to someone," Jess said as she came out slightly rumpled-looking "I want my rocking-horse back. I don't see why that's not just riding practice."

She sat on her bed and he sat in a very small chair, making her giggle, and read some of the books left to her that weren't too boring to bear. Corvo had almost forgotten that anything had happened, before the door opened without a knock and they both had to stand up suddenly to salute the emperor shutting the door behind him.

"I would like an explanation from you." his frown was turned on Corvo. Jessamine twisted her bedsheets nervously in her hands where he couldn't see them.

"It's my duty to protect you and your family, your Majesty." Corvo had put some thought into his response already, but it didn't really prepare for the reality - Euhorn Kaldwin was a towering man shaped like a barrel. Even if Corvo didn't think he always acted like an emperor, he certainly looked like one. "I don't do my duty by halves."

"And your duty includes insulting members of my household, respectable citizens trusted by me with the care of my daughter?"

"If they're doing a poor job, your Majesty, then yes."

"I find it hard to credit that you expect to know what a poor job would look like to the lady-in-waiting of a future empress. In fact, I don't see in what way this has anything at all to do with you. I expect you to apologise to all the ladies you have insulted, and if you ever wish to be allowed back into my house again you shall have to earn it. This is what comes of giving boys too much rank-"

Corvo had been expecting something like this for a while; but his retort (and an ill-advised one it would have been) was cut off when  Jessamine beat him to it, bursting out "What? Don't send him away, father, he's my friend!"

The emperor looked in no small part taken aback by that. "Jessamine, he's-"  _ a lowly born Serkonan,  _ he didn't say, but Corvo knew he was thinking it "-a guardsman, you have plenty of friends far more suited to-"

"No I don't, I don't have any friends I like, I don't have any friends at all, all I have are women I was  _ told _ were going to be my friends! Delilah was my friend, and now she's gone!"

The man paled, Corvo thought he even flinched. "I will  _ not _ be spoken to in this unseemly manner, Jessamine! You're making a scene."

"Don't send Corvo away!"

"This is completely inappropriate- no, I will not have this in my house- you," he pointed at Corvo "Leave at once."

If he had to go - and he didn't believe he would be allowed back for a second, not _him,_ contempt of the whole court - Corvo was going to get a word in before he did. He opened his mouth with a boiling pressure ready to spit out like scalding steam, but perhaps Jessamine realised that he might say something there really was no recovering from. So she blurted out  "You can't send him away, I'm naming him my Royal Protector!"

The stunned silence that followed was as much Corvo's as the emperor's. Jessamine seized Corvo's hand - she was shaking.

"Don't be ridiculous," the emperor spluttered at last "The entire selection process needs to be observed, all the candidates are already-"

"You can't make me not pick Corvo.  _ I _ get to choose, it's the law, you can't choose anyone for me!"

"Would you  _ stop _ this childish game of- by the Void, Jessamine, you  _ cannot _ choose a Serkonan, of all things, not a drop of honourable blood in him-!"

This man had absolutely no idea how to argue with a child, Corvo couldn't help but notice. He was more riled than Jess was. She was struggling to look him in the eye, but she stood her ground; Corvo felt more proud of her than angry at her father _._ "There isn't any law against it, I know because I checked! I can choose anyone I want and you have to let me, it's the rules. He's the best swordsman in the Isles! I don't see why I shouldn't pick him!"

The emperor had quite a long list of reasons, but Jessamine refused to stand down. "I'll tell everyone you broke the rules!" she retorted when he threatened to send Corvo to a desolate guard post on the northernmost point of Tyvia "And I won't pick anyone else, and someone will kill me because I won't have a protector and it will be  _ your _ fault!"

That accusation was finally too much for him; he made an undignified exit without even bothering to close the door behind him. Jess stamped up to it and did it for him - and the moment the room was private again, she almost collapsed. She had gone horribly pale, so Corvo put her gently into her bed, afraid she'd overwrought herself to sickness. Refusing to let go of his hand, laying there in tight-lipped silence, she fell into a fitful sleep.

Corvo sat vigil until someone eventually came to bring her to dinner. She was still asleep, so Corvo told him to fetch a physician and bring dinner on a tray. The manservant blinked at him. The servants didn't mind being ordered around by the  _ other _ lieutenants.

"By whose authority?"

"Mine, as Lord Protector to her ladyship." Corvo replied, watching with deep satisfaction the man’s jaw hit the floor "Now  _ do it." _

"Corvo, did you know there's a road with a big Serkonan community in Dunwall?"

"What?" he pricked his ears, and leant over Jess's shoulder. She lifted her book for him to see.

"Past the Academy of Natural Philosophy. It says there's a bakery. You should ask for a day off and bring me back something, please?"

He hadn't asked for a day off for three months because he wanted to make sure no one could get their hands on an excuse to accuse him of doing a poor job. They were already putting off the official announcement of his position, he knew they were stalling. Jess batted her eyelashes at him and smiled sweetly.  _ "Pleeeeease?" _

_ "I'm _ supposed to be taking care of  _ you," _ he ruffled her hair, but didn't object. He had been in Dunwall for over a year; he was sore for familiar things, so within the week he had stepped out of a cab and found himself staring disbelievingly at the little window boxes filled with Karnaca flowers, the sparse vine struggling up a wall at the entrance to an alleyway, the Serkonan awnings. One or two of the buildings had even been plastered in the Karnaca style. The people, seeing him, greeted him with a tentative friendliness - they knew a fellow Serkonan when they saw one, but his uniform threw them off. They seemed willing to give him a chance, though - especially the tiny, hunched old lady who came bustling out barely half an hour after his arrival, to look him up and down and tell him "you come and have some  _ real _ food from me, none of that Gristol shit they feed you other places".

She had a front room absolutely crammed with chairs and tables, and an open kitchen that smelt of spice and Cullero cigars, and someone out the back door who's muffled voice called her granny as he lamented the disgusting state of her log pile, which it sounded like he was dismantling. She leant around the doorframe to slap him with a dishtowel and tell him he could have some of what she was making if he stopped slandering her establishment with guests around.

It was like a kick in the chest. The wallpaper, the smell, the accents, the furniture - Corvo suddenly realised there were tears threatening in his eyes. He scrubbed at them hurriedly, trying to brush them away before anyone saw. He missed this. He wanted this. To go home and feel immediately like he belonged in a world he understood and that made his memories warm and happy instead of raw with longing.

Could he ever have it again if he was Royal Protector, bound to a Gristol princess for the rest of his life?

He bit down on a knuckle as his diaphragm spasmed, turning to the window to hide; then a hand covered his eyes, an arm was around his waist, and the low, raspy voice from the back door sing-songed  _ "Corvo"  _ in his ear.

He spun around so hard he almost tripped Daud backwards over a chair - the face in front of him had lost all its soft edges, but it had its big Serkonan nose and its pale, grey eyes, and a grin that bared all its teeth and put the term 'wolfish' to shame.

And, Corvo couldn't help but note, he had caught up with Daud for height, which he'd be more pleased about later when he wasn't grabbing Daud by the lapels and feeling a laugh rumble through the broad chest under his hands, or finding tears blurring his eyes. Daud's grin disappeared in a flash - he drew Corvo into a crushing hug, with a hand on the back of his head that tingled Corvo's skin under it. "Where in the Void  _ were _ you!"

"Uh- not now," Daud muttered into his shoulder. The old lady was watching them with raised eyebrows. “Sit down.”

They sank into chairs in the furthest corner of the room, Corvo’s hand clenched on Daud’s sleeve, and didn’t say anything for a while. Daud was staring, probably looking at all the changes Corvo was looking at in him. They had both grown their hair out from the close cut Corvo's mama had kept them in to stop them getting lousy, Corvo letting his hang around his ears, Daud smoothing his back. He looked like his mother. He had her long face and strong chin, her dark hair and her intense eyes. Corvo had thought he didn't have her skin, but now he was paled by his time in this sun-starved city, Corvo supposed it had had more to do with how much time they had spent outside than with genetics.

At length, Daud said “I’m sorry.”

“You should be,” Corvo jerked on Daud's sleeve, his relief bubbling together with anger to make something messy “Why didn’t you tell me? It’s been over a year, you fucking _bastard.”_

Daud laughed gently. “I know, but I…” his eyes flickered “I couldn’t. I’d get you in trouble.”

“What’ve you done?”

“Same as ever. Won’t do to have your employers find out you’re consorting with criminals, will it?”

Corvo huffed a reluctant agreement. “When I went to the last address I had for you, a girl said Overseers had been.”

A sneer of disgust flickered itself across Daud’s face. “That’s why I moved.”

“Is it about your mother still? Have you-?”

“No. Not… yet. They've been chasing me since I started looking. But they don't know where she is either, I'm glad of that at least."

Corvo swallowed the lump rising in his throat. Daud's eyes, wandering back to him, weren't fooled. "Corvo?"

"Mama’s- Daud, she’s-” he’d thought he was getting better, but the sob rose up as bitterly painful as when he’d first got the letter “As soon as I left, I didn’t even get to send her a letter and-”

Daud got up from his seat to grab Corvo, to pull his head against his chest and let him muffle his choked noises there. He only managed to get something like a hold on himself when he heard the sound of a cup being placed down beside him. The old lady was pushing a mug of something steaming at him - she didn’t say anything, but she put a hand on his shoulder and gave it a squeeze before she went back to the kitchen. Daud dragged his chair closer and put the mug into Corvo’s hands.

“I wish I’d known about this place earlier,” Corvo managed to force a laugh. The drink tasted like the kind of thing his mama used to make when they were ill and couldn’t sleep. He brushed away more tears.

“Corvo,” their hands found each other, resting on the chair arms between them, like they had used to. Daud's calluses were different against Corvo's palm - or had he just forgotten what it felt like? “I’m sorry, I- I should have- I’m sorry-”

“So am I,” Corvo offered him a sip “Hindsight.”

Only a few months ago he would have said ‘let’s find your mother and sail back to Karnaca on the first ship we can get’; he was too young to feel this torn. Daud watched him over the rim of the mug. He didn't much want this moment to go down in his memory as nothing but grieving, as tainted as their last reunion. So he accepted the drink when it was offered back and said "Where do you live?"

"You shouldn't meet me there." it was said slightly too fast "The Abbey's never that far behind me. If we meet here, all it means is we're both Serkonan."

"You pissed them off that bad?"

"Them and others." Daud traced an old groove in the table with a short fingernail "My mother never made any friends."

"How close are you to finding her?"

Daud twisted his mouth. "I don't know."

When Daud said 'I don't know' the 'but I'll find out' was a given. Like a dog with a bone, the old man had always said. Corvo didn't press any further, it wasn't like he could help much. So he opened his mouth and said jokingly "You just don't want me able to send you a letter every day about all the great stuff  _ I've _ been doing."

"I got the letter you sent before you left," Daud grinned "I bet it's  _ gripping _ work."

"I like breaking every last Gristol bastard that thinks Serkonos is all whores in the training yard."

"You can do that in the streets, and not have to stand around saluting rich pricks in between."

It stung him, it hooked a barb under Corvo's skin and pulled.  _ Don't get to this already. _ He shrugged, staring at their joined hands. "You don't get paid for it in the streets."

"Are you joking?" Daud gave a full laugh, almost throwing his head back "You'll get paid  _ better,  _ with a sword arm like yours. You can have my address if you're tired of barracks."

Corvo swallowed, his stomach clenching. "I can't."

He got no reply. It was the hardest thing in the world to look up into Daud's grey eyes and hold them as he said "I'm going to be a Royal Protector."

Daud looked about as stunned as anyone at Dunwall Tower had.  _ "Why?" _

"She picked me."

"I mean, why did you _accept?"_

"Because she needed a friend."

Daud snorted derisively, sitting back with a jerk in his chair. Corvo tightened his grip on his hand.

"I know, but if a kid gets all her toys taken away when she's ten and put into coats that are supposed to show off curves she doesn't even  _ have _ yet- that isn't right. I was the only one that spoke up for her."

The old lady was bustling loudly in the kitchen, but between them was silence, Daud looking down at their hands.

"You're nineteen. People serve as Royal Protectors until they drop dead."

"Maybe I'll retire. Or Jess will find someone else." he tried not to see the twitch in Daud's eye when he called her that "There's no law that I can't ever leave."

"Then why has no one else ever done it?"

Corvo didn't have an answer for that.

"What if an assassin sticks a knife between your ribs before then?"

"I'll just have to be good at my job-"

"Your job is to throw yourself on a sword so they get to live! You want to  _ die  _ for those people?"

"I  _ won't _ die. I want to protect her and then go home. But I won't go back without you and you won't go back without your mother so I might as well have something worthwhile to do in the meantime."

_ "Don't-" _ Daud's voice almost broke, throwing Corvo back to laughing at him when it was deepening for the first time and cracking every which way. Daud had missed Corvo's voice breaking. Daud had missed a lot of the growing up that Corvo had wished he'd had someone there to help him through. "Don't you dare do it for such a stupid fucking reason, Corvo, or you'll die and I'll know it was my fucking fault-"

"I won't die."

"My mother used to say that, when I asked her every night what would happen to me if the Overseers came and killed her." Daud grabbed Corvo by the back of his neck, making him jump. Perhaps what came next should have been a 'don't make promises you can't keep' - but whether Daud caught himself before he admitted he didn't expect to find his mother alive, or whether it simply didn't need to be said, nothing more came. They seemed to hover like that for an eternity, Corvo startlingly aware of how harsh the lines of Daud's face were when he set his jaw like that, when they were hovering inches away from each other. He'd always slipped into serious expressions by default, but now his face was so much a man's, and that of an unhappy one, a grim one. Corvo wanted to take his face in both hands and smooth away the lines. As a child, he would have done it without thinking; he didn't now.

"Don't be angry at me," he whispered, like they were back in their room talking late together under the covers "Please."

Nothing about Daud softened, except his eyes. "I'm not."

"You are, just don't stay angry."

"I'm  _ not, _ you idiot," and he drew their foreheads together, and Corvo felt like his heart started beating out of time-

Daud pulled away as the old lady slid some plates onto the table, and winked at Corvo as she poured him something 'from the homeland' that she promised would cure any and all homesickness. It was bitter as shit - he just about choked when he watched her down her portion and serve herself a refill. Then she shuffled over with a plate for herself, and said "You're from Karnaca too, then? Tell me if that cunt Balthamos is still making the best Orujo in Serkonos. He stole my recipe, you know?"

When they were finally wandering out into the coming dusk, and Corvo realised he'd told himself he'd only be an hour and that was at lunchtime, Daud said "She's absolutely lying about the Orujo, it was a stolen bottle of that that paid for me to go to school, and she's been in Dunwall since before we were born."

"She's earned some white lies for living in this place that long."

"She's earned a lot more, she feeds all the kids that come from Serkonos alone."

"Is that how you met her?"

"I needed to do one better than you finding the old man."

They laughed, and hunched down further in their coats when a sharp and miserable wind reminded them where they were. Daud glanced up and down the street; Corvo fought the urge to throw it all to the Void and go home with him, be somewhere where he didn't have hate breathing down his neck every moment. He still didn't like sleeping alone.

"If I promise not to visit, can I get your address anyway? If something happens-"

"You'll be better for not being able to get yourself in trouble." Daud flicked an errant flop of hair at Corvo's temple. He clearly didn't feel the new pressure that Corvo did in the close space between two bodies. "I'd rather spend my time here anyway."

"I can get another day off in two weeks - they're making the position official then."

"I'll be here." Daud's hand dropped, and he looked up at the rooftops for a long moment, as a cab trotted past them and lights began to turn on in windows. "Corvo?"

"Yes?"

"... Stay safe."

Corvo didn't know if he felt better or worse for such a generic goodbye leaving him so certain Daud had been going to say something else. "I will if you do."

Daud gave a single, mirthless huff. "We were never very good at it, were we?"

"We're still here."

"Unfortunately. If I have to die somewhere, I'd rather do it in Serkonos."

"Don't- say it out loud."

"Or the Outsider will hear?" Daud smiled at him "Real heretics know the Outsider doesn't give a shit. I don't think he even notices people go past. We must be gone in a blink to him."

"Still." just for a moment, Corvo squeezed Daud's hand, warm and rough and big against his own "Humour me."

Daud's fingers moved to brush Corvo's as he drew his hand back. It was strange how dark grey eyes could get in the dim light. Daud gave him a shrug and a smile. "Fine. Goodnight, Corvo."

"If you're not here in two weeks, I'll find you and beat your ass."

_"Goodnight,_ Corvo," but he was laughing silently, walking backwards down the road as Corvo stood there and watched him go.


	4. Chapter 4

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Corvo learns, in full, what it is to be Lord Protector.
> 
> Also features historically inspired violations of privacy, because royalty's bodily functions were kinda public knowledge back in the day, and that's pretty fucked up. So warning for that.

"No, it was- bad, awful, those islands are  _ riddled  _ with insects, and  _ all  _ of them bite you." Corvo chipped a chunk of moss off the slate beneath him, threw it, and hissed in disappointment.

"I did see them in the distance once. On the boat leaving Cullero, a storm rolled in late and we were blown off course and had to go back. They were so green." Daud bit a date in half and tossed the part left in his hand, leaning to peer and then reclining back, the signal for Corvo to fish for a date himself out of the paper bag on the hot roof between them.

"They were beautiful. Just the plants and the animals, mostly. And when the water was shallow it was this blue- like the Kaldwin blue. But I'm done having all my blood sucked out. Did I-? No, your go."

"Were there bloodflies?"

"Yeah. Knew someone who had to get his leg cut off because of them." Corvo shuddered, and saw Daud make a revolted face.

"I don't miss  _ that _ about Serkonos. But everything else."

"Yeah. Is this supposed to be summer?"

"Only just. It gets hotter, but not by much. I-"

There was a rattle, bringing them both leaning forwards to look down to the street below and at the confused man checking his bucket, realising it was surrounded with bits of moss and half eaten dates. He looked up, but they had ducked back out of sight, smothering their laughter. 

"You don't-" Daud scrabbled furiously against Corvo's pinning hands, squirming free like a cat, or a ferret "Get enough _ practice, _ clearly-" he ducked another grab and rolled away across the neat grass, and when Corvo lunged for an ankle he quickly found himself bundled up and trapped on his back with his neck threatened to be snapped between Daud's thighs. He gave up, sprawling out like a starfish. 

"Are you done?"

"Comfy."

"My dick?"

"Yeah." Corvo waited for Daud's legs to relent their grip and then, with just enough force to be threatening, tapped his head back. Daud jolted, scrabbling free, leaving Corvo to laugh hysterically on the ground. He scuffed off to take a swig from the bottle sitting with the remains of lunch, came back to Corvo still giggling, and pretended to wind up for an almighty smack to his crotch.

"Drink?"

Corvo knocked a mouthful gratefully back. Daud meanwhile was pulling his shirt with its grass and sweat stains off, kicking off his boots, stepping up from the lawn to the flat, slab-like rocks that made a natural barrier between the garden and the sea.

Corvo glanced back. The grand house, with its columns and towering windows, sat as shuttered as it had when they'd arrived. "When did you say the gardener comes?"

"End of the week. Relax. The place is a tomb otherwise."

"If anyone catches the Lord Protector trespassing I'm in trouble."

"Then this is the best place to do it." Daud tossed him a smirk over his shoulder, and stepped out of his trousers and underwear. Corvo had just enough time to take in the ropey muscle that had filled out his limbs, and the new paleness his skin had taken on beneath his clothes, before he dove headfirst into the water.

The last time Corvo swam, it had been in the warm west Serkonan sea. This was  _ not _ that. By the time he'd come up to the rocks Daud was clinging to one and gasping through the seizing cold that knocks all the air out of a person. Corvo laughed at him; he lunged for Corvo's legs to tip him in. Corvo evaded it and stripped, and immediately felt the difference in a sunny Gristol day and a sunny Karnacan one. He hesitated, eyeing the murky water.

"Better to get it over with." Daud wheezed. Corvo was not encouraged, but not about to lose face either; he divebombed in. Immediately he couldn't breathe as his every muscle contracted in the sudden rush of freezing water. He floundered stiffly towards the surface, and a hand found his arm, helping him emerge spluttering, gasping curses that would have been shrieks if he'd had the air. At least Daud found it funny.

Later, when they'd hauled themselves out of the water like seals to lie on the rocks and let the sun dry them, Corvo looked over at Daud, lying on his front with his head cushioned on his folded arms. "What did you mean, not get enough practice? I almost got you good enough."

A smile crept onto Daud's face, his eyes closed. "You used to be better."

"You used to rush in too fast."

"Mm." A conceding noise. "I'm better now, you aren't."

"No one to practice with." Corvo shrugged, the rock rough on his shoulders, only slightly fishing for an offer. Daud cracked open a knowing eye.

"You can just ask."

"I am, aren't I?"

He sat up, ruffling his still damp hair, body lolling against a single supporting arm. The hair that had only been appearing when he left Karnaca now darkened his chest and ran all the way down his belly. 

Corvo looked away from it, up at the spreading branches of the huge trees that had been allowed to grow down here, unclipped, unshaped, just as they pleased. Their leaves were green still, but dark, losing their shine, and nearly spent.

He didn't know why he felt nervous when he looked at Daud sometimes.

With a hitch of breath Daud stood, stretching, muscles moving taught beneath his skin. "I can teach you a Tyvian chokehold. You'd be surprised how useful it is."

Thankful for the distraction, Corvo clambered up. He blinked, and looked down at their feet. "Are you-?"

"What?"

Corvo lifted his eyebrows. "You've shrunk."

At once, Daud's face became a scowl. "How?"

"Look," Corvo measured with his hand flat on the top of his head to indicate the gap between their heights "Where did it go?"

"That doesn't work, your hand's wobbling all over the place."

"It's not, you've lost inches-" he bent and scooped up one of Daud's boots, eyeing the sole of it. Daud snatched it out of his hand, but not soon enough. "Are you serious? How thick are these-"

"Maybe you should stop growing!" Daud snapped, and swung the boot at him. Corvo tumbled out of the way.

"You always did have short legs."

Daud didn't need much more incentive to show Corvo all the chokeholds he knew.

"I read the papers." Daud spun his glass on the table to the pattering of rain outside. "I… I'm sorry."

Corvo's eyes were unfocused on the amber liquid of Daud's glass threatening to escape every time he spun it. "I read the papers. I… I'm sorry."

"It's fine." Corvo replied, blank. "Should've seen it coming."

He, the Serkonan, acknowledged? Respected? No, couldn't have that. Every time he closed his eyes he had to relive it. All the watching eyes and the steps of the ceremony he'd been briefed on to make sure he didn't mess up, all that preparation - maybe it had just been to make sure he noticed the insult. The twitters of the fucking crowd when the Emperor's hand didn't offer him the ring of state to kiss. When it rested on his head. Regal. Polite. If he'd been a  _ child.  _ If he'd been a  _ dog. _

The Emperor still hated him, then. Good to know.

"Why are they keeping you on if they don't even want to?"

"They like Jessamine and she said she wants me." Corvo shrugged. "Fuck them. I'm not letting it get to me."

That was a lie, and not even a particularly good one. Daud sighed softly through his nose. "You want to put up with a lifetime of this?"

"I-..." He didn't. "It'll be different when Jessamine's empress."

Daud's face said what he thought of that.

"When the Protector - the other one - when her and the Emperor are gone, it will. They're the worst."

"Oh. Her."

That tone brought Corvo's eyes into focus, looking up quizzically at Daud. "What about her?"

"She used to be a guard before. Had a reputation for kicking down doors at night and dragging families away. I'm not surprised she's got a grudge, no one in the Serkonan quarter likes her."

Things clicked into place, much to Corvo's discomfort, and her too-soft voice came to mind.  _ "Right now, everyone sees Jessamine as a foolish little girl with a crush on a mongrel off the street. If she can tame the savage, they'll find it admirable - but she's a child, as you say, so you'll have to tame yourself for now. Grow your hair out, only prisoners and people in workhouses keep it that short." _

He had grown it since then, even as he bristled at her. He wished he hadn't now.

"I thought she might be different." He admitted. "That we might get on, you know. We spar sometimes. She's good."

"As good as you?"

"Not as good as me."

Daud's smile made Corvo's chest flush warm. "If you want to leave, I could have us on a boat in a day."

He did want to leave, at times. He could picture Karnaca's bay opened up like welcoming arms before him, and stepping down onto the dock to breathe in the familiar smells on the hot air. He sighed. "I've still got some fight left."

"Save some of it for yourself." Daud warned, and offered Corvo his glass.

The voices went muffled as Corvo let the door shut behind him, inhaling the cool air of dusk and undoing the top button of his shirt to let the heat disperse. Daud was a hunched shape and a glowing cigarette end under the window into the old lady's crowded front room, where the voices could still be heard toasting Corvo.

"Feel any different?" He asked, smoke catching in the warm yellow light spilling out onto the road.

"Should I?" Corvo dropped down next to him, stretching his legs out. The stones beneath them were cold and damp. "Not a whole lot of difference between nineteen and twenty."

"You weren't a Lord when you were nineteen. Weren't you living off a ship then?"

"I think I was in Bastillian, breaking up a smuggling ring. The barracks got a barrel of wine for my anniversary."

Daud let out a bark of laughter. "Alright for some."

"Yeah, not the next morning though. I didn't know wine was that strong."

"Hah. As long as you can remember what you did, it's not so bad."

"I remember, I just don't know if I…"

Daud let out a slow plume of smoke, and when Corvo didn't reply, prompted him "Don't know…?"

Corvo chewed his lip for a good few more seconds. "I got- with a girl. I don't know. It's-... have you ever-?"

"No." The dismissive response was such an unexpected relief, until Corvo started to worry that Daud was judging him.

"You said you knew a prostitute."

"I do, but not for that. She gives me good information." His eyes glinted in the dark as he fixed them on Corvo. "Did you think I was bragging about paying for sex all this time?"

"No!"

He was laughing. "You did. Don't tell me, you're pining for that girl's nethers still."

_ "Void, _ no." Corvo gave him a shove. "It was fun, but I felt like… I'd rather have known her better."

"Don't hear that every day. You know, I think there's something about it that fucks with people's heads just like too much drink does. You think you know someone, then they get it in their head they want to fuck and nothing else matters."

"It's not… it can't be that bad if everyone's doing it."

Daud shook his head. "Some people are smart, most people are lucky to never have to face it, and the rest just throw away everything they have for one night rutting on someone new and pretty, they can't help themselves. It's crazy. I don't get it."

"I hope you think I'm one of the smart ones."

"Of course." His voice was soft for that. "Didn't you ever notice though? People go mad."

"I mean, maybe. It feels good."

Daud just shrugged. "Feels like a waste of time."

"Didn't you say you hadn't tried?"

"I know what cumming feels like, Corvo, I'm not an Overseer. If it's barely worth the hassle on my own then I don't see how adding someone else is going to help."

Corvo felt his face turning red, and his tongue bubbling with the need to press for more, but someone came out, shoving glasses at them, dragging them back inside. The whole thing left his insides churning, but whether it was good or bad, he couldn't work out for the life of him.

The last of the swallows left Dunwall, the absence of their shrieking calls making a quiet that Corvo had always lamented, but now even more so. The Tower's gardens kept lively as ever, but the wind-bent trees were half dead. The Emperor threatened to move the household out to an estate near Whitecliff for the hunting, and Corvo resigned himself to missing Daud for a month or more.

Whispers ran through the Tower's corridors. The physician, stern over his round glasses, had warned that the Empress was not to be made to travel in her condition. 

Corvo didn't know why, but the whole building seemed to be holding its breath.

Ladders thunked gingerly up against the walls, the servants heaving great swathes of black velvet up to be nailed there or to replace curtains. Bit by bit the Tower descended into black; Corvo kept his place by the door with aching feet, and kept the time by the creeping of the light across the walls. The early winter sunset was a clear golden one, a rare Dunwall beauty - the dull, dark colours of the city gave the light an extra vibrancy, and the way it would glitter and shine on the wet stones made, for a little while, everything less grim. The view of outside would have lifted his spirits, if he could leave his post even as far as the window. He did not. Sunset became dusk became darkness; servants lit the oil lamps; the guards patrolling the corridors changed shift; the regular passing of people dwindled, then disappeared. He didn't know what time it was when the door opened for Walsingham to step outside. She looked gaunt, her usual stony expression given over to a grimace that lined her face well beyond her years. She closed the door behind her, and exhaled.

"Get someone to bring a truckle bed and nightclothes for Jessamine, she wants to stay the night with His Majesty."

"How is he?"

"Not well." She said simply, but from her face he guessed worse. It wouldn't do to be exposing the full extent of the Emperor's frailty where anyone could hear and spread gossip. "I'd put money on him having to miss the funeral."

"And Jessamine?"

"Not ill, at least. She may have to take his place at the ceremony."

"She's-"

"Just a child, so you keep telling me." It was almost a snap, but she didn't want to make that much noise. "Can you leave off for five minutes? I didn't become a Protector to one day babysit  _ your _ needless fretting."

He twisted his mouth, but shrugged. "You were the one that said she worries too much."

"You'll find her more capable than you realise." Was the dry response. "I've known her since she was born, remember. It's not been a year yet for you. Go."

With that she returned into the Emperor's rooms, and Corvo went to rouse someone to do the job. He got Jessamine's bedclothes himself, but could only hand them over at the door. Walsingham did not explicitly dismiss him, so he took up his post again, his muscles aching, his eyelids drooping. The first gleam of the sun was no relief, either; it brought with it several members of parliament, looking like they hadn't slept much more than he had.

They all huddled in the corridor, speaking in hushed tones, demanding answers of every poor maid or footman that could never hope to have them. After near fifteen minutes, a man came up to Corvo, perhaps only now desperate enough to speak to  _ the Serkonan, _ or else finally noticing that he was there. People had always been curt with him, uncertain, but politicians had had brains enough to be passingly polite. Since the farce of his investiture though, they'd gotten bold. "What's going on then?" The man demanded. Technically, they both knew, Corvo outranked him.

"His Majesty won't be able to see anyone." He managed through a clenched jaw. "Try the Spymaster." But they continued to loiter, waiting for the physician to make a visit. Their answers came from the opposite direction, when the door to the Emperor's rooms opened. It was Jessamine. She stood there in her bedclothes still; the group all looked astounded and awkward, doing their best to avert their gazes from her with dignity. Corvo tried not to snigger. It all seemed a little absurd to him, who had at Jessamine's age been one of many children who were known to belt down streets completely naked and dripping canal water.

"My father isn't able to accept visitors." She told them, standing as tall as her bare feet and tiny stature would allow. The white of her bedclothes made the grey tinge to her skin stand out all the worse, and her pale eyes were sunken, rimmed with red. "Is there anything especially urgent you have to say to him?"

The gaggle shuffled uncertainly. A grey-haired woman, not so easily ruffled by the shock of a child ready for bed, got tired of it and said "Only our wishes for his return to good health, my Lady, and whether he might be well enough to attend the funeral service."

"If he can't, I will." Jess replied. Corvo supposed Walsingham had put it into her mind. Everyone muttered and mumbled, but in vague assent, so she went back inside with a polite, short goodbye. They still didn't leave, gathered and speaking in urgent, hushed tones - Corvo wanted them gone just for the chance to rest his eyes without it being noticed. Breakfast was bought for everyone attending on the Emperor; Corvo stayed hungry. The physician finally came, and he didn't stay long, only telling the group that he had seen this collapse coming a mile off and that the Emperor would recover, as he had in the past, given time to rest his 'delicate constitution'. Nobody asked about Jessamine's health, nor could Corvo get a word in edgeways to suggest it before the physician was gone, taking the politicians with him.

Corvo leant against the wall and quite possibly drifted off like that. He was woken up by the tailor and their assistants being allowed into the rooms by the Protector. She paused to look Corvo up and down. "When you're wanted, you'll be summoned." She told him, and shut the door.

Corvo finally allowed himself to step away, everything about him stiff and slow and aching and tired, to look through the window. Midday, maybe; the dull, wet streets far below were full of huddling groups under an iron grey sky.

He forced himself to stretch and move about before he returned to his post, his every limb heavy as if with a ball and chain.

News was never truly suppressed, only delayed - it was a footman from the house of a Mrs Fotheringhay, who was a member of parliament, who first broke the news of the Emperor's illness beyond the Tower. He heard his mistress speaking in urgent tones as he passed on his way to sneak into the garden to get handsy with a scullery maid, and couldn't help, when he'd helped pick the twigs out of her hair afterwards, telling another young man who was delivering a huge side of pork to the house about the news, to show off that he knew things. The young man then passing a girl he knew, as he went on his way, that he would have quite liked to have got handsy with in a rich house's topiary, shared the news again to impress her. She was on an errand, met her friends as she was buying vegetables, and had so much fun being the one to tell the shocked crowd - which included other shoppers and even the grocer - that she took a full hour longer than she needed and got a round rebuke from her mother when she finally came home.

From each of their mouths it spread like cracks in ice, so that it was only two days since the Empress had been pronounced dead, and not a full one since the footman had leant over with a haughty air to the butcher's assistant, that Daud overheard it while he was sitting on a wharf, puffing a cigarette, watching Millie wrestle with the trunk in her little boat. It rocked precariously as she tried to make the trunk fit where the two of them could then fit around it, and she didn't pay any heed to the man racing down the cobbles and waving his hat at a group hanging around a warehouse door. Daud's eyes followed with the interest of a cat, unable to ignore movement.

"Emperor's dying," the man was panting "Taken deathly ill and sure to die of grief!"

It was not the footman, or the butcher's assistant, or the girl on an errand's need to tell the story  _ exactly _ as they heard it.

"Shit." Someone else said. "We'll have a Regency.  _ Shit." _

"That Gibbon bloke, I reckon."

"That won't matter, we'll have Morley knocking on our door in a month. Who'll stop 'em without an Emperor?"

"He won't take our guns to the grave with him - and there’s barely enough of them left on their barren rock to make a city, forget an army. It's the fighting over the regent that'll ruin us."

"I told you: Gibbon. My cousin works his estate by Driscol, says he's got ten thousand pistols stored there, and enough loyal to him to use them. He'll just take it."

"Nobody’s got ten thousand pistols - where’d he keep them, hidden in the chimney? Shit, I tell you what, I'm burying the silverware tonight, if anyone wants I'll share my stash hole but you can't fit anything bigger than a hagfish in it."

"We're fucked, my lads, we're bloody fucked. The Brimsley faction, aren't they cousins whatever-removed to the Empress? Void, imagine  _ them  _ with the Regency, mother protect us from  _ that-" _

"Lots of chimneys in a grand house-"

Daud frowned, finding his eyes flicker across the water to the white smear of Dunwall Tower in the distance. Millie slapped his knee. "Why en't you helping me with your mess?"

He clambered down into the boat and took one of the sets of oars, then they rowed out to the mouth of the Wrenhaven in silence, and hauled the trunk overboard.

The Emperor was not fit to attend the funeral of his wife, or their infant son. On the day of the ceremony Corvo dragged himself from his bed feeling not unlike a walking corpse after barely any fulfilling sleep, buckled and buttoned himself into the black regimentals that had been whipped up for him, and knocked on the door of the Emperor's rooms. For the first time in days Jess emerged, and for the first time since her father's collapse she had the power to acknowledge him. He didn't hold it against her. She gave him an empty smile while a maidservant pinned a jewelled swan brooch to her breast, completing her outfit. It was in her mother's style, and suited her far better than the tasteless things she'd been forced into before - square, padded shoulders and a collar that rose up to her jaw showed her good posture, to make up for her lack of height, and gave the slight bones she had inherited from her mother a little helpful bulk. She was made all of straight, strong lines - an empress-in-waiting, and not a bride up for bidding.

They went, just the two of them, down to the chapel, where the bodies lay in state, waiting for their final journey.

"Are you sure?" Corvo asked even as he pushed the door open. Jess nodded silently. Inside, the air was thick with too many scents to be able to parse any single one, as incense mixed with perfume mixed with the bed of flowers that ringed the bodies. An ornate blanket covered the Empress's legs, as if she were in bed, and her arms had been artfully bound with ribbons, to disguise their purpose of holding her in place around her child. He was in the swaddling cloak lined with cloud-soft rabbit fur that had been meant to shield him from Dunwall's cold. Jessamine had made it for him, explaining to Corvo as she went all the heraldry and symbolism behind the silver shapes she was embroidering into it, the flowers for his intended delivery date in spring, the animals for luck, the wreaths of leaves and feathers that stood for constancy or bravery or loyalty. Corvo had never seen her so excited about anything.

Now, as she stepped up to the altar, he had to lift her up - she was too short to reach the bodies on their laden shrine. With his help, she managed to press a kiss to her mother's cheek, and to her brother's forehead, then she asked to be let down, hurrying to dry her tears before they ruined her makeup. Someone hadn't thought this all through; regardless of it, Corvo knelt down and pulled her into his arms to let her bury her face in his shoulder and weep. He didn't know if she'd had the opportunity before now, if she'd been allowed to sob her heart out with her father or forced to be decorum and support for him. He knew which he'd guess.

It took a long and solemn march down from the chapel, through the Tower, into the street, onto the waiting horses, between the silent crowds. A towering hearse drawn by eight towering black horses carried mother and son, an honour guard surrounded the whole thing, and at the rear came the noble mourners in order of precedence, with Corvo, and finally Jessamine at the rear of the hearse. She looked  _ tiny _ \- her pony had been swapped for a horse to try and offset it, but it was still significantly shorter than the high-headed chargers the rest of the mourners, people of wealth, were riding on to show off. It was a gentle thing, though, and took care of her, clever enough to just plod along and follow the hearse even when Jess could no longer hide her tears and had to take a moment to dab them away. Corvo could only stay in his allotted place behind her, as much as he wished to move up and offer her a reassuring hand, or even company. All the watching eyes, when they were done with the hearse's wreaths and flowers, rested on her.

Snow had started to fall by the time they reached the the Kaldwin mausoleum, sitting white and gleaming in mimic of Dunwall Tower, and not even fully finished. No one had expected to have need of it so soon. The scaffolding inside had been wrapped in silks and chains of greenery to disguise it, and not badly, either - but the whole marble space was still severe and cold in Corvo's eyes. The bodies were carried into the vault below the chapel space once the High Overseer himself, summoned in the hopes that such an honour would comfort the Emperor's grief, had given the service, then Corvo followed Jess out back into the snow.

The entire time he had been sharply aware, his eyes scanning the crowd waiting at the gate of the cemetery, the mausoleum rooftops - he hadn't forgotten his real purpose here. Now, as he paused while Jess was given a leg up back onto her horse, his eyes seemed to know where to look before he had realised why.

Daud's collar was drawn up and a flat cap on his head drawn down, but he was looking right at Corvo with intent from between onlookers. He touched his throat, as if it were a mindless, fidgeting hand, but with that stare Corvo was in no doubt as to what was meant. At once he turned back to make sure Jessamine was mounted, got on his own horse, careful to give no outward show of his change. The cemetery seemed clear, although the snow was beginning to make it hard to see. The procession, however, still had packed crowds and tall houses to pass on the way back to the Tower, and all the windows with a good view had been full as well. Corvo let his eyes light on Daud again - but he had disappeared.

Before they were about to set off, Corvo drew up beside the captain leading the guards. "Keep an eye on the rooves and the upper windows, and gather four around Lady Jessamine with me."

"Did you see something?" The woman asked with a frown.

"Just a feeling."

She lifted her eyebrows at him but he said no more, and she did as he asked, to his relief. He'd half worried she would ignore him. They at last set off with Jess now center stage, not blind to the sudden group that was riding in a circle around her. She gave Corvo a quizzical look, to which he smiled as if nothing were amiss. He had seen movement amidst the crowd that he recognised, hunched shoulders and a steady pace following them down the street.

Chances were, the extra security would frighten anyone off, seeing that they were suspected. Assassination attempts failed far more than they succeeded, and assassins knew that better than anyone. Corvo eyed the people leaning out of their windows, trying to get a good look at the spectacle. All the houses were well-to-do, and the highest windows were inevitably packed with groups of young servants in their attic bedrooms. His gaze flickered to a particularly packed house on the left, where at one window a very young girl was trying to climb up onto what must have been a high windowsill. She leant so far out his stomach lurched and his horse startled slightly when he gestured, calling out "Oi! Someone stop that girl before she falls!"

The words were barely out of his mouth before she had shrieked and slid. Horses all down the line skittered, people gasped and churned where she had disappeared down into them with a terrible speed. From the deep, reverent silence exploded shouts of alarm and shocked gossip and several shrieks. Jess's horse had come to a stop, where she could stand up in the stirrups and peer at the kerfuffle. "What happened? Did she fall? Is she alright?" She made to turn her horse in that direction only for Corvo to grab her reins, not intending her to see whatever horrible sight awaited on the stones. In the exact same moment, with his attention on her, there was a gunshot and Daud's voice barking  _ “Corvo!” _ beneath it.

A man - nothing special, dressed like anyone with a decent job and a frugal mind, middle aged, scruffy - came running from the crowd on the other side of the road, pistol in hand. Behind him Daud had vaulted the stunned people and was coming after him, which he clearly realised as he hadn't stopped to try for accuracy but was aiming again as he ran. Corvo for an instant already saw what he should do, whirl his horse around, charge right at the assailant, herd him into guards that could apprehend him, using the horse like a barricade and a weapon-

That was the pirate-battling soldier in him; but he was a Protector now. He grabbed Jessamine by the scruff and forced her down over her horse's neck, jerking his own mount's reins to make it lift its head in complaint and further shield her. He was reaching for his own pistol but he knew he wouldn't get it off before the man had fired again. Guards were going to intercept him, he might get one more shot before they’d gunned him down - Corvo’s job was to stay put and take as many bullets as he had to.

Daud had always been quick. He leapt like cats did, as if gravity meant nothing to them, driving both knees into the man’s back and sending him to the snow-dappled ground so hard he skidded a foot on his face. His gun fired in the chaos and there was a general scream of alarm, but Daud was brutally efficient at twisting and wrenching the man's arm until he dropped the weapon. The guards reached them at last - it had been seconds, all in all, from start to finish. The captain, wheeling around to add herself to the now closed, jostling circle about Jessamine, roared for them all to  _ move! _

Corvo's name was being called.

A guard intercepted Daud before he could come any closer. He leant around them, shouting, his voice straining "You're bleeding! Corvo!"

Corvo looked down at himself. A dark stain showed on his leg, and when he pulled at his coat to get a better look, there was a hole in it. The captain cursed and yelled for someone to ride ahead and call the physician; the last thing Corvo remembered was uttering the questionable words "it's not serious, I don't feel anything".

He didn't recognise the room he woke to, although by the overly-tall ceiling and dark wall panels he could guess it was the Tower. Rather more concerning was the awful pain in his side, beneath which his joints were stiff and his skin felt stale with old sweat. He uttered a single, unhappy groan, and there was the sound of movement beside him.

"Ever the front page news, aren't we, Attano?" Protector Walsingham said from a chair in the corner. Corvo closed his eyes and set to ignoring the pain. It did not deter her. "Don't be such a misery, I had intended on praising you. I'm told you did exactly what a Protector should, and what I myself failed to do the first time I had to live up to my title."

He cracked one eye open again, admittedly curious, and caught the thin smile that twitched under her dark eyes.

"I left him on his stage so I could wrestle a woman coming with a knife. Dramatic and heroic of me, but of course she had an accomplice, and I had left Euhorn wide open to them - fortunately for us all those were the days when he was broad in the chest and not in the gut." She laughed shortly at her own joke. "If either of them had had a gun, though, history would be very different. It's good you have more sense."

Corvo said nothing. He felt so awful he didn't think he'd be capable - anyway, her confession left him somewhat stunned. She pushed on.

"So perhaps my lectures have paid off, or you're better than I gave you credit for. We'll give you the benefit of the doubt on that count."

He did manage a quiet snort at that. Her past accusations -  _ just a boy from the gutter with dreams of rising above your station, no notion that there's just as much dirty work to be done at the top as at the bottom -  _ had stung more than anyone else's insults, because he'd hoped to find a kindred spirit in her. He'd accept this as something towards an apology.

"You're very lucky as well, you realise, because I was about to rip your throat out for meddling, and I suppose I can't now. No, don't speak, you know what I'm talking about and I know what you did, I spoke to the laundrymaid. If you had just come to me instead of taking it on yourself to stick your nose in what you don't understand, you might even have avoided that bullet."

He had to gather himself for that, not just let her lecture him, and with much wincing and hissing he managed to prop himself slightly more upright. She watched him impassively, ankle on the other knee, lounging in the wooden chair like it was a throne. "It seemed pretty cut and dry to me." He managed, before his ragged throat gave way to coughing and he had to slam his fist into the mattress several times to take away from the scorching pain in his side. She waited for him to finish before she replied.

"It really isn't. You have to understand that things are  _ different _ for royalty. The King of Morley isn't being rude-"

"Or  _ creepy?" _

_ "Or _ creepy," her tone admonished him "By requesting that kind of information from her laundrymaid. It's polite to do it that way, actually, it's tactful. He's future proofing. He might want to offer a son as a husband for Jessamine someday - but he's thinking of his own dynasty also, and he needs a daughter-in-law that will carry it on. There isn't an heir for the past thousand years and more -  _ especially _ one whose mother had such difficulty conceiving - that hasn't had people who want to make sure everything  _ works." _

"That's disgusting."

"If you're an immature boy from a backwater, perhaps." She replied easily, always quick to lever his foreignness against him, to remind him how little suited the son of labourers was to this moneyed world where even common sense was different. "It's just another part of her health, which every citizen has the right to be concerned about, when it's vital to their own wellbeing. Now that you have so rudely had the King told to 'mind his own business', he probably thinks that, as well as being a fool, you're trying to hide that she  _ hasn't _ got her menses yet-"

"Which the laundrymaid said she hasn't."

"Yes, she's too skinny and she worries too much. But there's time, she's not late yet."

"So why does he need to think she has?"

"Because he'll be happier to think her robust and quick on the draw. He's also less likely to exaggerate her lack if he thinks his story would be immediately shot down by others who have been told she's functioning."

"I hate this." Corvo said flatly, his mouth twisted in disgust.

"And I hate rain, but what am I to do about it? I've told you, dirty work exists at all levels of society, and our positions are about more than swinging swords around. If an insurrection breaks out, if parliament rises up, if the people come to the gate with pitchforks;  _ you have already failed. _ You  _ prevent _ that from happening. Once it has, even if you keep her alive and on her throne through it, which you probably won't, you've let the glass crack. More will form."

"That should be private, an  _ empress _ should have privacy, a little girl should get to grow up without people poking around her underwear-!" He broke off in a hiss as he tweaked his side and it knocked the breath right out of him, his diaphragm seizing. The Protector gave him a look he hadn't seen in her before - something genuine hiding behind the black of her eyes, a softness to the creases at the corners of them, a sadness.

"She is the property of her people. It will be that way until she dies. You just have to help her bear the load." She stood up briskly- a conversation was always done when she said it was - checking her pocket watch. "Don't overexert yourself, I want you back at work the very second you can do so. I'm already tiring of the guards that are having to cover for you, and so is Jessamine."

Corvo blinked, and thought to ask "How long has it been?"

"A week."

"A w- a  _ week?" _

His disbelief seemed to amuse her. "You almost  _ died, _ Attano." She snapped the pocket watch shut. "You're doing quite well, considering. I suppose you have that stranger to thank that you didn't take any more bullets."

That was all she said, sweeping out of the room. And yet Corvo felt a prickling at the back of his neck as those last words smothered all the rest of the conversation, the way she'd said 'that stranger', the way her eyebrows had risen a fraction. The pain kept him from sleeping, or from thinking coherently, so all he could do was ponder uncertainly on it, and bring himself nothing but unease. He thought he should write a note, just to let Daud know he was alright; but he put it off. And then again, worry itching in him. Jessamine came in the days following, to sit at his bedside and have someone let her air the terrible weights on her shoulders. Her mother and brother gone; her father in hysteric illness; a child killed before her eyes; her own life assaulted; her friend hurt so badly in the course of it. Corvo didn't know how she would bear it. He watched her cheeks seem only to sink further, her complexion remain colourless and sickly.

"She's not easy to put to bed," the brisk, middle-aged maid who had the duty of Corvo's bandages told him when he asked "Been having nightmares and not sleeping and doesn't like to be left alone, from what I hear." She sighed, her work-worn hands laying perfect lines of gauze around his middle. "Poor girl. Some Overseers should do some banishing on her, I think bad spirits must be about to cause so much in the way of awful things."

"Someone could spend the night with her, surely," Corvo did not like the idea of subjecting Jess to Overseer rituals or the idea that the Outsider was haunting her.

"I don't know how right it is for someone to sleep in Her Ladyship's room." The maid frowned.

"Someone her own age, one of the younger maids?"

"Well, I suppose… wouldn't be  _ terribly  _ unseemly..."

"Offer it around downstairs, see if anyone will do it. They can come and see me if they will."

He wasn't expecting to have a knock on his door late that very evening. Another maid came in at his word, and behind her was a teenage girl, also in servant's uniform, lanky and with gingery-blond hair that was falling out of her bun every which way. She hovered awkwardly in the background as the woman -  _ definitely _ her mother, by their faces - curtsied very politely to Corvo, and immediately said with an anxious voice "I was told you're looking for a companion, for Lady Jessamine?"

Surprised, Corvo looked more seriously between them. The girl avoided his eyes by staring at her shoes, which she scuffed on the floor. "Yes, to keep her company at night."

"Lydia is only sixteen, but she'd do very well, sir, she's had young sisters and was always very good with them, she's just the girl for the job."

Corvo noticed the  _ had, _ the  _ was. _ The girl's face flickered, or perhaps it was the lamplight. He put down the torturous history book he'd been reading. "Perfect. Can I speak to her alone?"

Hesitantly, her mother left, peeping around the door until the last second. Lydia stood there with her hands behind her back, pursing her lips.

"You're the Lydia that got in trouble for hiding in the dumbwaiter, aren't you?"

A smile danced at the corners of her mouth, despite her attempts at suppressing it. "Yes, sir. Lydia Brooklaine."

"And for being on the gatehouse roof spitting raisins at people?"

"Perchance that was me." She turned her eyes innocently skyward.

"Can you start now?"

"Can you excuse me to the housekeeper?"

"Fair enough. I need a hand getting out of bed."

Her mother was, in no small way, stunned. But also ecstatic - Corvo could guess that this may well be Lydia’s last chance to not get kicked out of the household. There would be raised eyebrows when it was realised where he’d put her - he just hoped nobody would be offended enough to dispute it.

She helped him shuffle down the quiet, dark hallways to Jessamine's rooms. Two guards standing either side of the door stared in confusion at the pair of them, but they were hardly going to protest his knock. Protectors went everywhere. Jessamine’s voice called nervously "who's there?" so he went in, gesturing for Lydia to wait outside.

Jess was sitting on the floor, huddled to the side of her bed - her face became the picture of relief at the sight of him. "Corvo! Are you better?"

"Better," he put on a smile, and took in the untidy frill of fabric that ringed the bed and hid the gap under it - several books were poking half out. Corvo had to wonder if she had been hiding down there. "You're not asleep yet."

“I'd rather not." She said quietly, her face falling. Corvo held out an arm, and she fitted in under it, wrapping her thin arms around him.

"I know. It's not easy. What about company? Just so you don't have to sleep alone."

"You'd get in trouble from the doctor for being out of bed."

"Not me. Lydia?"

She crept in the door, eyes downcast and did a good curtsey.

"She's happy to help."

Looking up, a little nervously, she offered Jess a soft smile. "Lydia Brooklaine, your Ladyship. It's not easy to be alone when you're sad, I know."

Jess was looking at her, Corvo thought, with surprise. She gathered herself enough for an uncharacteristically shy "Thank you, I would like that."

_ I'm getting good at this,  _ Corvo thought with relief, on his way back to his own room. The next morning, Jess came to see him with her hair done differently, pulled higher up the back of her head, and with a brooch conscripted into it to look like a hair pin. He wouldn't have noticed, if Jess hadn't pointed it out. "Lydia did it for me." She absolutely beamed. "She's so neat with my hair, it didn't hurt at all! Even  _ father _ said it looked nice."

Corvo thought of the messy bun from the night before and imagined her desperate mother dragging her out of bed and rushing her dressed, hoping against hope to find a way to keep her last child employed. Not a bad idea, then; not a bad idea at all.

Walsingham came by later, stopped in the doorway, and said "Don't look so  _ smug."  _ But there was a smile there. "We'll see how good of an influence the girl is. You may have caused yourself more problems later than fixed now."

"Thank you for your glowing approval." He replied, and was smacked on the leg. He didn't quite know what to think. Every time he felt something like pride in her approval, he'd remember what Dsud had said about her, and dark clouds came into his mind.

In another week he was allowed to take exercise, first around the corridors, then out in the garden, even though the weather was foul. Jess did offer to go with him the first time - he had her stay indoors, and found her more easily persuaded with the promise of Lydia's company. He would hear them giggling long before they arrived at his door to visit - or find them, when he mixed his exercise with his duties of escorting Jess to meals or lessons, with their heads together in constant discussion, over books, with embroidery, one teaching the other something, Lydia invariably making Jess laugh.

A  _ friend.  _ Another child to be children together with. He cursed himself for not having done anything about it sooner, it was all she'd ever needed. 

In all this, he'd forgotten the letter to Daud. Still pleased with himself, he took his first turn in the garden, where the sharp, freezing wind drove the taste of salt against his face, the paths were icy, and a single spindly bush had put out a smattering of yellow flowers that looked forlorn and unwell beneath a coat of ice. The patrolling guards huddled where the wind was least, and no public were making use of the gardens that were open for them dawn until dusk. Corvo made his way carefully down the slippery paths, aiming for a slightly sheltered spot down low where he could still enjoy the freedom from stuffy indoors. He didn't realise he was being followed until he was down at the lowest end, where there were no guards, which was what Daud had intended. Corvo leapt nearly out of his skin at being grabbed ferociously from behind, but he knew those arms - they wrapped around his chest and squeezed him hard, Daud's face burying into his neck. Corvo wheezed, putting his hands on Daud's.

"I was going to write to you-" he blurted, realising he'd forgotten with a horrible rush of guilt. Daud didn't reply, not at first; he was holding Corvo like a sailor clinging to his storm-tossed ship. Corvo had to wait for him to loosen, so that he could turn around in his arms, and see his harrowed face. They were so close that Corvo could count his eyelashes, the stubble on his jaw. His breath tasted like cigarettes and his lips were chapped. His grey eyes had on their stormy darkness, holding Corvo down with an unhappiness that couldn't be pointed to, like that of a frown, but existed in them like the life that left dead eyes glassy when it was gone. There were so many greys in them - silver and slate and storm, and how many others had ever got close enough to them to see? Corvo had, a thousand times, but only once before with this much unhappiness in them, and Corvo still meant what he'd said then, promising to take Daud home, and take care of him.

The urge rose up so strongly in Corvo that he thought for a moment he could already feel his body moving of its own accord. Bewildered, his eyes took in Daud's face again, the face that was and was not the one he'd first met in the school yard. The face that had intrigued him ever since. The face that now, quite suddenly, he realised he wanted to kiss. He wanted to kiss Daud. He wanted to touch his body and for it to be different from all the other times they'd touched. He wanted to  _ kiss _ him.

It wasn't quite the grand realisation he'd been led to believe it would be, from his mother's wistful stories or the ardent songs that wafted all over Karnaca. Something settled into place inside his chest, like a cat curling up on a favourite lap.  _ Ah, there you are. About time you came home. _

Daud rasped "I really thought you were dead" in a voice more smokey than before, breaking a silence that had nothing to do with sound. Corvo tried to reply and found he couldn't, not when Daud's rough hands came up to either side of his neck and his heart went like a trapped bird against his ribs because maybe Daud had noticed too-

He brought their foreheads together, bumping warm against each other, under-the-blankets close. Corvo took a tiny, shuffled step in, to the tantalising press of their coats. "Sorry." He whispered. Daud's eyes were half closed.

"You'd better be."

"I'm okay, thanks to you."

_ "Barely." _ Daud's hands tightened a fraction. "How much good is it when you've already been shot?"

"I'm not going to be ungrateful for one bullet when it could have been two or three."

"One could have been too many. If you die here, they'll bury you here. In this stupid uniform. And get servants that never knew you to wash your body, but that should be my job, if you die here, I should take you home-" Corvo opened his mouth to try and soothe, to stifle Daud's cracking voice, but Daud shook him tightly "If I die here I'll end up in the Wrenhaven but if you do, I'll have to watch them take you away forever-"

Corvo began just barely to lean in, but both of them saw it at the same time, their heads snapping up. Daud's hand grabbed Corvo's wrist where their close bodies hid it.

Walsingham, her shadow cast over them, leant on the wall above, a cigarette dangling in one hand, and inclined her head to them with a wry smile.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> :o hi  
> maybe this is slightly too long oop


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